Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestseller: A “lush, tipsy, all-night mambo of a novel about Cuban musicians in strange places like New York City” (People). Brothers Nestor and Cesar Camillo arrive from Cuba in 1949 with dreams of becoming famous mambo musicians. This memorable novel traces the arc of the two brothers’ lives—one charismatic and macho, the other soulful and sensitive—from Havana to New York, from East Coast clubs and dance halls to the heights of musical fame. The basis for a popular film, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love “tells of the triumphs and tragedies that befall two men blessed with gigantic appetites and profoundly melancholic hearts. . . . Hijuelos has depicted a world as enchanting as that in Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera” (Publishers Weekly). “Rich and provocative . . . a moving portrait of a man, his family, a community and a time.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

オスカー・イフエロスが描くのは、陽気なマンボの旋律の裏に潜む、移民たちの狂おしい哀愁と情熱です。奔放な兄セザールと、亡き恋人を想い続ける繊細な弟ネストル。対照的な二人がニューヨークで刻む音楽の軌跡は、単なる成功譚を超え、失われた故郷への果てしないレクイエムとして胸を揺さぶります。 映画版がマンボの躍動感と熱狂を視覚的に体現したならば、原作はその影にある個人の孤独や記憶の断片を文学的にすくい上げています。活字のみが到達し得る重層的な心理描写と、映像が放つ圧倒的なリズム。この二つを併せて味わうことで、読者は移ろいゆく時代のうねりと、決して色褪せない愛の旋律を全身で享受できるはずです。