Cuban-American novelist Oscar Hijuelos collapsed while playing tennis, never regaining consciousness. According to his agent Jennifer Lyons the cause of death was sudden cardiac arrest. He was sixty-two years old. Hijuelos was the first Latino author to win the Pulitzer Prize for his work Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love published in 1989. His parents immigrated from Cuba in the 1940s and he was born in Manhattan on August 24, 1951. The northern Morningside Heights neighborhood in which he grew up played an important role in his later work, as did the theme of émigrés adapting to new cultures. His most well known novel, Mambo Kings chronicles three decades of a Cuban family in New York. It was also turned into a film staring Armande Assante and Antonio Banderas. His other works include Our House in This Last World, his first novel published in 1983, and The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O’Brien, published in 1993. Hijuelos earned his Bachelor Degree and Master of Fine Arts from City College. He is survived by his wife and brother.

Source: The New York Times