Our House in the Last World, Oscar Hijuelos
Our House in the Last World, Oscar Hijuelos
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Our House in the Last World
A Novel

Author: Oscar Hijuelos, Junot Díaz

Narrator: Jason Canela, Gustavo Rex, Junot Díaz

Unabridged: 9 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/09/2024


Synopsis

A first-generation Cuban son comes of age in the debut––and most autobiographical––novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.

Winner of the Ingram Merrill Foundation Award and the Rome Prize

Hector Santinio is the younger son of Alejo and Mercedes, who moved to New York from Cuba in the mid-1940s. The family of four shares their modest apartment with extended relatives in Harlem, where homesickness and nostalgia are dispelled by nights of dancing and raucous parties. But life’s realities are nevertheless harsh in the Santinio family’s adoptive land.

When Mercedes takes Hector and his brother to visit Cuba, to better know her culture, Hector contracts a serious illness that leads to a terrifying period of hospitalization back in the United States where, isolated from his family, he loses much of his ability to speak Spanish. And it is this fracturing that sparks a lifelong quest to not only reconcile his Cuban identity with his American one, but to also understand his parents’ ambitions and anxieties within the country at large.

In this profoundly moving account of immigrant life, Oscar Hijuelos displays, once again, his mastery over both character and language—and sets readers on an unforgettable journey of hope, longing, and self-discovery.

Includes a Reading Group Guide.

Author Bio

Oscar Hijuelos, the son of Cuban immigrants, was in New York City in 1951. He is a recipient of the Rome Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. His novels -- Mambo Kings, Our House in the Last World, The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien, Mr. Ives' Christmas, Empress of the Splendid Season, and A Simple Habana Melody -- have been translated into twenty-five languages.

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