The Cuban-American writer Oscar Hijuelos - the first
Latino to win the Pulitzer Prize - has died aged 62.
Hijuelos's
agent, Jennifer Lyons, said he had died of a heart attack in New York City
while playing tennis.
Hijuelos won
the award in 1990 for his second novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love,
which was later adapted as a Hollywood film.
Like many of
his novels, it focused on the lives of immigrants and their quest for the
American dream.
Hijuelos was
born in New York City in 1951 to Cuban immigrant parents.
He enrolled in
local community colleges before studying creative writing under tutors included
Susan Sontag, Donald Barthelme and Frederic Tuten.
Hijuelos was
also exposed to Cuban and Latin American writers including Jose Lezama Lima,
Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Carlos Fuentes, whose work inspired him.
He published
his first novel, Our House in the Last World, in 1983.
In his 2011
memoir, Thoughts Without Cigarettes, Hijuelos said he had struggled against
being labelled an "ethnic" writer.
The Mambo Kings
Play Songs of Love tells the story of two Cuban brothers who travel from Havana
to New York to start an orchestra.
In 1992 the
book was turned into a film starring Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas.
Hijuelos is
survived by his wife, Lori Marie Carlson.
Source: BBC
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