A Cuban immigrant comes of age in NYC in this autobiographical debut novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.

New York City, 1944. Hector Santinio is the younger son of Cuban immigrants who share an apartment with relatives in Spanish Harlem. Caught between his mother's anxieties and his father's macho expectations, Hector struggles to find an identity for himself while wrestling with both cultural and personal isolation. Meanwhile, his older brother Horatio falls into the womanizing and drinking pattern demonstrated by their father.

This is a sweeping, poignant tale of the immigrant experience in New York—as a homeland the brothers have never visited exerts an undeniable influence on them both. A debut novel "marked by eloquently trimmed prose, great assurance, and uncompromising darkness," Our House in the Last World demonstrates the storytelling powers that would later win Oscar Hijuelos so much acclaim (Kirkus).