A Simple Habana Melody: (from when the world was good) Book

Most of Hijuelos's novels deal with Cuban immigrants and their process of acculturation in America. In his most interesting work, A Simple Habana Melody, he turns to Cuba, the homeland of his heritage, to explore the life of Israel Levis, a gifted and distinguished musician living in Habana. (Hijuelos chooses to use the phonetic spelling of "Habana" instead of Havana.)

The novel begins with Israel's return voyage home to Habana from Europe after his captivity in the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald. Having been on tour in Paris when the war hits France, Israel's name makes his identity mistaken for a Jew, and so he is sent to a labor camp. In the opening pages of the novel, he is sailing back to Habana and the story begins to work backwards. With resplendent descriptions, Hijuelos covers Israel's life from an inquisitive childhood to his successful career as a composer. A bulk of the plot addresses Israel's lifelong love affair with the elusive Rita Valladares.

This is a standout novel in Hijuelos's oeuvre. His prose is achingly rich and elegant with sadness and longing. He captures the pristine loveliness of Cuba and an era of musical wonder in Habana before the war and the subsequent revolution with its rise of communism. Hijuelos is a writer to admire for his literary gifts: the fine and precise prose, the polish evident in each of his sentences, the guilty pleasure of sensuality and eroticism in his scenes, and the immensely real and unforgettable characters he creates. A Simple Habana Melody is my favorite Hijuelos novel, one in which images and passages of Cuba remain vivid like photographs in my memory.