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Putnam
June 2011
On Sale: June 2, 2011
384 pages
ISBN: 1592406297
EAN: 9781592406296
Paperback
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Non-Fiction Memoir
The beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist turns his pen to
the real people and places that have influenced his life
and, in turn, his literature. Growing up in 1950's
working-class New York City to Cuban immigrants, Hijuelos
journey to literary acclaim is the evolution of an unlikely
writer. Oscar Hijuelos has enchanted readers with vibrant characters
who hunger for success, love, and self-acceptance. In his
first work of nonfiction, Hijuelos writes from the heart
about the people and places that inspired his international
bestselling novels. Born in Manhattan's Morningside Heights to Cuban immigrants
in 1951, Hijuelos introduces readers to the colorful
circumstances of his upbringing. The son of a Cuban hotel
worker and exuberant poetry- writing mother, his story,
played out against the backdrop of an often prejudiced
working-class neighborhood, takes on an even richer
dimension when his relationship to his family and culture
changes forever. During a sojourn in pre-Castro Cuba with
his mother, he catches a disease that sends him into a
Dickensian home for terminally ill children. The yearlong
stay estranges him from the very language and people he had
so loved. With a cast of characters whose stories are both funny and
tragic, Thoughts Without Cigarettes follows Hijuelos's
subsequent quest for his true identity into adulthood,
through college and beyond-a mystery whose resolution he
eventually discovers hidden away in the trappings of his
fiction, and which finds its most glorious expression in his
best-known book, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.
Illuminating the most dazzling scenes from his novels,
Thoughts Without Cigarettes reveals the true stories and
indelible memories that shaped a literary genius.
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