A Simple Habana Melody, Oscar Hijuelos
A Simple Habana Melody, Oscar Hijuelos
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A Simple Habana Melody
A Novel

Author: Oscar Hijuelos, Arturo O'Farrill

Narrator: Fabio Tassone

Unabridged: 11 hr 49 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/11/2025

Synopsis

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning author comes a “masterpiece” about a composer returning to his beloved homeland after WWII (Kirkus, starred review).

The year is 1947. Israel Levis, a Cuban composer whose life once revolved around music and love, is finally returning home. En route to Habana, Cuba from Spain, he is a shadow of his former self, disillusioned after he was mistakenly sent to a camp during the Nazi occupation of France. In Habana, he escapes his anguish by reminiscing about his happiest moments before the war, when he lived a life of pleasure and excitement—and had a loving, if unrequited romance with Rita Valladares, the alluring singer who inspired Levis’s most famous composition, “Rosas Puras.”

A tender homage to music, art, and a vibrant country at the edge of modernity, A Simple Habana Melody is a virtuoso performance from one of America’s most talented writers.

Includes a reading group guide. 

About Oscar Hijuelos

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by robin on April 15, 2022

A Difficult Life In Havana The "Simple Habana Melody" of the title of this book is a song and rumba called "Rosas Puras" (Pretty Roses) that the main character, a fictitious composer named Israel Levis, dashes off in 1928 in the space of about 20 minutes in a bar in the company of his friend and lyri......more

Goodreads review by Roger on October 22, 2016

Most of Hijuelos’s novels deal with Cuban immigrants and their process of acculturation in America. In his most interesting work, A Simple Habana Melody, he turns to Cuba, the homeland of his heritage, to explore the life of Israel Levis, a gifted and distinguished musician living in Habana. (Hijuel......more

Goodreads review by David on June 20, 2011

The writing in this novel about the musical career of a Cuban composer is itself lyrical. The narrative is prose that aspires to be, and is, both poetry and music. The phrasing and the flow of the syntax is melodious as the composer's experience, because of his name, in a Nazi concentration camp run......more

Goodreads review by Ruthanne Taylor on May 27, 2018

I devoured this book. I loved every word. One of the most beautifully written, wonderful stories I have ever read. I will certainly read more from Senor Oscar Hijuelos.......more

Goodreads review by R.E. on August 05, 2019

A Simple Habana Melody by Oscar Hijuelos 5/11/2019 Paper Israel Levis, a Cuban native, is a piano master of worldwide fame. Much of the book takes place in his beloved Havana, tracing the time prior to Fidel Castro. His talent, to a large extent based on a single popular song, has allowed him to t......more

Quotes

“Pulitzer-winner Hijuelos is at his massively engaging best. A masterpiece of history, music, wonder, and sorrow.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Hijuelos triumphs in capturing the sights and sounds of Habana at the edge of modernity."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Hijuelos magically conveys the teeming excitement of musical Cuba, incorporates real characters such as Buster Keaton, George Gershwin, and Al Jolson, and deftly portrays Levis's sexual ambiguities, which include his platonic love for a talented Cuban mulata, an earthier liaison with a beautiful Jewish Resistance fighter, and an oblique but lifelong fascination with the charms of men better-looking than he is. Powerfully evocative of the music and moods of the period, this novel is highly recommended as both psychological and "show biz" fiction."—Library Journal, starred review

"Perhaps no other contemporary novelist has managed to sustain a melancholy mood more convincingly than Hijuelos does in this haunting story of a Cuban composer whose life is an agonizing mix of joy and sadness, creativity and repression."—Booklist, starred review

"A nuanced novel about art and beauty."—Entertainment Weekly

"On every page of this slyly masterful book we hear the sound of song."—Chicago Tribune

"The writing has a gossamer beauty."—People

"Keeps us enthralled, then lingers in our minds like the haunting notes of a song about longing and loss, hope and disappointment, suffering and salvation. Hijuelos draws you—deeply and inextricably—into his eloquently romantic and elegiac new novel." —Oprah magazine

"Habana is a seductive and elegiac book about music, love, and sex."—USA Today

"A bittersweet elegy for the pre-Castro capital." —New York magazine

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