Oscar Hijuelos has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 7 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
Summary
In 1949 - when the dance rage is the mambo - two young Cuban musicians, recent immigrants, make their way up to the grand stage of New York. The Castillo brothers, workers by day, become night stars of the dance halls, where their orchestra plays the lush, sensuous, pulsing music that earns them the title of Mambo Kings. Oscar Hijuelos’ marvelous portrait of the Castillo brothers, their families, their fellow musicians and lovers, their triumphs and tragedies, brings to life the sights and sounds of an era in music and an unsung moment in American life.
©1991 Oscar Hijuelos (P)2000 Phoenix
Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise
Summary
Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise, by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Oscar Hijuelos, is a luminous work of fiction inspired by the real-life, 37-year friendship between two towering figures of the late 19th century, famed writer and humorist Mark Twain and legendary explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley. Hijuelos was fascinated by the Twain-Stanley connection and eventually began researching and writing a novel that used the scant historical record of their relationship as a starting point for a more detailed fictional account. It was a labor of love for Hijuelos, who worked on the project for more than 10 years, publishing other novels along the way but always returning to Twain and Stanley; indeed, he was still revising the manuscript the day before his sudden passing in 2013. The resulting novel is a richly woven tapestry of people and events that is unique among the author's works, both in theme and structure. Hijuelos ingeniously blends correspondence, memoir, and third-person omniscience to explore the intersection of these Victorian giants in a long-vanished world. From their early days as journalists in the American West to their admiration and support of each other's writing, their mutual hatred of slavery, their social life together in the dazzling literary circles of the period, and even a mysterious journey to Cuba to search for Stanley's adoptive father, Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise superbly channels two vibrant but very different figures. It is also a study of Twain's complex bond with Mrs. Stanley, the bohemian portrait artist Dorothy Tennant, who introduces Twain and his wife to the world of séances and mediums after the tragic death of their daughter. A compelling and deeply felt historical fantasia that utilizes the full range of Hijuelos' gifts, Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise stands as an unforgettable coda to a brilliant writing career.
©2015 Oscar Hijuelos (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Dark Dude
Summary
From the Pulitzer Prize winner Oscar Hijuelos comes a novel about identity, circumstance, and a way in which we all struggle to accept our true selves. In gritty, clear prose, Dark Dude captures New York City in the 1960s - violent, decaying, slouching away from the American dream - and brings to life a character who has no choice but to head out west in search of something better. But, when Rico and his ex-druggie friend arrive in Wisconsin, they discover that picket-fenced apple-pie people can be just as violent and judgmental as the neighbors they left behind. No longer an outsider by appearances, Rico is forced to swallow an uncomfortable truth: he is still an outsider.
©2008 Oscar Hijuelos (P)2008 Blackstone Audio
The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien
Summary
In The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Oscar Hijuelos brings to life the incredibly high-spirited Montez O'Brien family. Nelson O'Brien runs the Jewel Box Movie Theater in a small Pennsylvania town where he and his wife, Mariela, raise one son and 14 daughters. Through the eyes of Margarita, the eldest daughter, the lives, loves and tragedies of the Montez O'Briens' and their complex family relationships unfold. While reflecting on the life of Emilio, her doggedly masculine brother, Margarita also ruminates on the nature of femininity, family, sex, love, and earthly happiness. Her musings recall exhilarating adventures, eliciting tears and laughter, and tenderly reveal the bounteous heart of a warm, passionate family. At once lush, erotic, and gorgeously written, The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien is a masterwork by one of America's greatest writers.
©1993 Oscar Hijuelos (P)1993, 2017 Dove Audio / Phoenix Books