NEW YORK — Oscar Hijuelos, a Cuban-American novelist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1989 novel “The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love” and whose work often captured the loss and triumphs of the Cuban immigrant experience, has died. He was 62.
Hijuelos died of a heart attack Saturday in Manhattan while playing tennis, said his agent, Jennifer Lyons.
“The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love” became a best seller and earned him international acclaim. He won the Pulitzer for fiction in 1990, making him the first Latino writer to receive that honor.
In his 2011 memoir, “Thoughts Without Cigarettes,” Hijuelos writes of how he struggled against being labeled an “ethnic” writer and notes that even today there are few other Latinos whose work, despite the considerable number of talented authors, has been awarded the same recognition.
Hijuelos was born and raised in New York City and enrolled in local community colleges where an array of early writing teachers — Susan Sontag, Donald Barthelme and Frederic Tuten — encouraged him to continue to pursue his craft.
His other novels include “Our House in the Last World,” “Empress of the Splendid Season” and “Dark Dude.”
