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Read the Witcher

A Simple Habana Melody

A Novel

Coming Soon
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Contributors

By Oscar Hijuelos

Foreword by Arturo O’Farrill

Formats and Prices

Price

$18.99

Price

$24.99 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. Trade Paperback $18.99 $24.99 CAD
  2. ebook $11.99 $15.99 CAD
  3. Audiobook Download (Unabridged) $27.99

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From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Oscar Hijuelos comes a “massively engaging…masterpiece of history, music, wonder, and sorrow” 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’ 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 melodic, virtuoso performance from one of America’s most talented writers.

Includes a reading group guide. 

Genre:

  • “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

On Sale
Feb 11, 2025
Page Count
320 pages
Publisher
Grand Central Publishing
ISBN-13
9781538722190

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Oscar Hijuelos

About the Author

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.

Craig Nova is the author of fourteen novels, which have been translated into 11 languages. He has had an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Harper-Saxton Prize (previous recipients have been James Baldwin and Sylvia Plath), multiple awards from the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and other prizes. His work has appeared in the Paris Review, Esquire, New York Times Magazine, Men’s Journal, Best American Short Story series, and other publications. As a screenwriter he has worked for Touchstone Pictures (a division of the Walt Disney Company), Amblin Entertainment, and other producers. A film was made in 2018 from his novel, Wetware. 

Learn more about this author