Guest of the ilb 2007
Oscar Hijuelos was born in New
York in 1951, the son of Cuban immigrants. He grew up with Spanish as
his mother tongue and learnt English during a year in hospital when he
was pre-school age. English was to become the active language for his
work. He studied English language and literature and creative writing
at City College in New York. Among his teachers were Donald Barthelme,
with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. Encouraged by both Barthelme
and Susan Sontag, Hijuelos began writing short stories, some of which
were published in the anthology »The Best of Pushcart Press III«
(1978). He was praised as an »outstanding writer« by the publishing
house for his story »Columbus Discovering America«. Hijuelos worked at
an advertising agency until 1984 before finally devoting himself
full-time to writing. He has written seven novels, admired for their
lyrical and passionate narration, which mainly deal with the fate of
Cuban immigrants to the USA before Castro's rule.
Hijuelos was the first Latino
writer to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. »I consider myself a New York
writer of Cuban parentage, with different influences. My background is
an important element, the most important, but not the only one.« His
first novel, »Our House in the Last World« (1983), is a coming-of-age
novel, which depicts the life of a family of Cuban immigrants in the
forties and makes use of many autobiographical experiences. Hijuelos
received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for his novel
as well as the Rome Prize of the American Academy. His second novel,
»The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love« (1989), finally turned Hijuelos
into an established literary great. It tells the story of Cuban
brothers César and Néstor Castillo, who emigrate to New York in the
early fifties and start a succesful mambo band with whom they come to
perform regularly on a well-known television show. In 1992 the novel
was made into a movie starring Antonio Banderas and in 2005 was adapted
into a Broadway Musical.
Most recently Hijuelos has
published »A Simple Habana Melody« (2002), the life story of the
eccentric Cuban musician Israel Levis, who emigrated to Paris and there
found success. The Nazis, who considered him to be Jewish because of
his name, shipped him to Buchenwald during World War II. He later
returned to Cuba, a broken man.
Hijuelos, whose further
distinctions include a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation and
nominations for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National
Book Award, lives in New York City with his wife, writer Lori Marie
Carlson. His work has been translated into more than 25 languages.
© international literature festival berlin
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