As the first Hispanic writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, with The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Oscar Hijuelos is already a beloved and revered author. After his death in 2013, Hijuelos’s wife, Lori Marie Carlson-Hijuelos, made it her mission to preserve and expand his legacy by securing a literary home for her late husband’s collection, which she found with Grand Central Publishing. She calls their reissuing of Hijuelos’s body of work “one of the most satisfying and thrilling times of my life.”

“Oscar was a first in American literary history,” Carlson-Hijuelos told PW. “A Pulitzer in fiction had finally been won by someone of Hispanic heritage, and Cuban American at that! When Mambo Kings was published and won the Pulitzer, American literature was changed forever. It was a landmark moment in our nation’s cultural brilliance: Latinos were finally welcome at the table.”

This newsletter was produced in partnership with Grand Central Publishing.

For an author of influence like the late Oscar Hijuelos, a literary body of work endures long past the final keystroke. Born in 1951 to Cuban immigrant parents in Manhattan, Hijuelos graced the book world with titles like Our House in the Last World; The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (for which he won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, becoming the first Hispanic writer to receive the honor); Beautiful Maria of My Soul; and Thoughts Without Cigarettes: A Memoir. Since Hijuelos’s death in 2013, his wife and fellow author Lori Marie Carlson-Hijuelos has served as caretaker of and champion for his oeuvre. Now, Grand Central Publishing is fulfilling one of Carlson-Hijuelos’s aspirations for her late husband’s books by reissuing the entirety of Hijuelos’s fiction for adult readers in beautifully designed new editions. PW spoke with Carlson-Hijuelos about carrying on Hijuelos’s legacy, his impact on the literary world, his faith, and how the two authors inspired one another in marriage and in writing.

What does it mean to you to see your late husband’s body of work reissued for a new generation of readers?

It is one of the most satisfying and thrilling times of my life, maybe the most. To see Oscar’s fiction get so much attention in multiple ways is a blessing. The week after Oscar’s death, I established three goals to guard and share his literature with the world: I knew I had to find the very best home for the bulk of Oscar’s archives (I have); I had to make a musical of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love with the finest Latino artists in the entertainment world (this has begun with a bang); and last but not least I had to bring together Oscar’s novels under one publishing roof (happily accomplished with Grand Central/Hachette).

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

The Pulitzer Prize-winning modern classic of two Cuban musician brothers during the mambo-filled nights of 1950s New York.

It's 1949 and two young Cuban musicians make their way from Havana to the grand stage of New York City. It is the era of mambo, and the Castillo brothers, workers by day, become stars of the dance halls by night, where their orchestra plays the lush, sensuous, pulsing music that earns them the title of the Mambo Kings. This is their moment of youth, exuberance, love, and freedom―a golden time that decades later is remembered with nostalgia and deep affection.

Hijuelos's portrait of the Castillo brothers, their families, their fellow musicians and lovers, their triumphs and tragedies, re-creates the sights and sounds of an era in music and an unsung moment in American life.

Includes a Reading Group Guide.

Beautiful María of My Soul

In Beautiful María of My Soul, Oscar Hijuelos returns to the passionate tale he began in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.

In The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, María is the great Cuban beauty who stole musician Nestor Castillo's heart and broke it, inspiring him to write the Mambo Kings' biggest hit, "Beautiful María of My Soul." Now in her 60s, María García y Cifuentes is the lady behind the song, living as an exile in Miami. But while she left Cuba decades ago, she has never forgotten Nestor.

We now see the Mambo Kings story through María’s eyes. And, as she thinks back to her days and nights in Havana, an entirely new perspective unfolds. We meet her as the illiterate peasant girl with unspeakable, head-turning beauty, who then meets Nestor in Havana and ultimately stays with her moneyed lover instead of him. But when the Cuban revolution intervenes, María and her daughter find themselves in Miami and in community with other Cuban women. And as she begins to take lessons at the community college, María goes from muse to the writer of her own story.

Includes a Reading Group Guide.

Our House in the Last World

A first-generation Cuban son comes of age in 1940s New York in the debut––and most autobiographical––novel by Oscar Hijuelos.

New York City, 1944. Hector Santinio is the younger son of Cuban immigrants Alejo and Mercedes. The fraught family of four shares their small, modest apartment with extended relatives in raucous Spanish Harlem. There are parties, dancing, and dreamy, homesick storytelling about their idyllic island. But life’s realities are nevertheless harsh in the Santinio family’s adoptive land.

Mercedes decides to take Hector and his brother Horacio to visit relatives in Cuba to better know her culture. While there, the three-year-old Hector contracts a serious illness that leads to his terrifying year-long hospitalization and recovery back in the United States. Caught between his overly-protective mother’s fears for his health and his father’s macho behavior and disappointments, the adolescent Hector struggles to understand his identity and place in the world.

In the aftermath of his father's untimely passing, Hector staggers toward adulthood, haunted by notions of inadequacy and sadness, and wrestles with the truth of his father as a deeply flawed but honorable man.

This is a jewel-box of a tale whose treasure is the hope and yearning of immigrants in America.

Includes a Reading Group Guide.

Check Out Chapter 2 of Mambo Kings

For readers familiar with or new to the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning Oscar Hijuelos, Grand Central Publishing offers the second chapter of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.

Win a Copy of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

Enter today for your chance to win one of 10 copies of Oscar Hijuelos's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, courtesy of Grand Central Publishing.

Oscar Hijuelos (1951–2013), a native New Yorker and the son of Cuban immigrants, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of nine novels and a memoir and a recipient of the Rome Prize awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He also received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He became the first Latino winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1990 for his international bestseller The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, and his novels have been translated into more than 40 languages.

Grand Central Publishing, formerly Warner Books, came into existence in 1970 when Warner Communications acquired the Paperback Library, subsequently publishing paperback reprint editions of such bestsellers as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Today, Grand Central Publishing reaches a diverse audience through hardcover, trade paperback, and mass market imprints that cater to every kind of reader.