Which 1990 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Oscar Hijuelos follows two Cuban American brothers in New York?

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is Oscar Hijuelos’s 1990 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about two Cuban American brothers in New York.

Published in 1989, the novel follows César and Nestor Castillo, musicians who perform Cuban popular music while building lives in mid-20th-century New York. Their fictional band becomes associated with the mambo era and its vibrant dance culture.

Hijuelos became the first Hispanic writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The novel is sometimes confused with the 1992 film The Mambo Kings, which was based on Hijuelos’s book but is not the title of the Pulitzer-winning work. The story also connects family memory, migration, music, masculinity, and the changing fortunes of immigrant communities.

The award recognized the novel in the 1990 Pulitzer cycle. Its title refers to the Castillo brothers’ musical identity and their performances, rather than to a nonfiction account of mambo history.