{"product_id":"empress-of-the-splendid-season-1","title":"Empress of the Splendid Season","description":"\u003cbody\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eTitle: \u003c\/b\u003eEmpress of the Splendid Season\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor: \u003c\/b\u003eOscar Hijuelos\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN: \u003c\/b\u003e9780060175702\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher: \u003c\/b\u003eHarper Flamingo\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished: \u003c\/b\u003e1999\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding: \u003c\/b\u003eHardcover\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage: \u003c\/b\u003eEnglish\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eEdition: \u003c\/b\u003eFirst Edition\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNumber of Pages: \u003c\/b\u003e352\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition Note: \u003c\/b\u003eClean, unmarked copy with some edge wear. Good binding. Dust jacket included if issued with one. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher Description: \u003c\/b\u003eThrough four novels in the last decade, Oscar Hijuelos has produced a body of work that is without rival in contemporary literature, both in the lush, incantatory rhythms of his extraordinary prose and in his profound and heartfelt vision. In his transcendent new novel, Hijuelos tells the story of Lydia Espana, a beautiful and formerly prosperous \u0026amp;eacute'migré from pre-Castro Cuba, who becomes a cleaning lady in New York. Once the spoiled, pampered daughter of a small-town mayor and adored by men--a \"queen of the Congo line\"--she is forced because of a youthful sexual indiscretion to leave home and, in 1947, finds herself suddenly living the life of a working poor. In time she falls in love with Raul, a humble waiter. One night in a Manhattan ballroom, in the middle of a bolero, Raul purposes marriage, for Lydia is his \"empress of the most beautiful and splendid season, which is love.\" \u003cp\u003e A life of promise is disrupted when Raul falls ill and Lydia, finding employment as a domestic, becomes the head of the family. Striving to educate her town children, Rico and Alicia, in the style of the upper class, she must endure a lesson in humanity, cleaning the homes of New Yorkers much better off than herself. Among her employers is Mr. Osprey, a reserved and kindly lawyer, who eventuality takes an interest in her family's well-being and, during the turmoil of the 1960s, intervenes at a critical juncture in the life of her teenage son, Rico. Throughout this novel Lydia remains a sensual and powerful woman who meets the trails of a lonely life with humor and a gleam of triumph in her eye--a sense that she is someone special--an empress of fortitude, of dignity. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e Hijuelo's genius for evoking the heart and soul of his characters has never been more vivid, moving, and impassioned than in \u003cem\u003e Empress of the Splendid Season.\u003c\/em\u003e A master of eloquent detail, Hijuelos allows Lydia to open up, alive and vibrant on the page. No one writes better of love or the pulse of the city. And no one has better captured the complexity of what happens to generations of people who come to America: how assimilation ius at once the achievement of dreams and yet, sometimes, a loss of what has rooted us to the past. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e Lydia, I am to you, as a sparrow adoring the sky; \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e Lydia, you are as the moon reflecting upon the water, \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e which is my soul; \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e Lydia, you are the queen of beauty, \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e the Empress of my love, \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e and you preside over the splendidness of my feelings for you, \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e like the morning sun on the most glorious day \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e of the most beautiful and splendid season, \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e which is love... \u003cbr\u003e -- Raul Espana to his future wife on the night he proposed marriage, 1949, from \u003cem\u003eEmpress of the Splendid Season\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/body\u003e","brand":"Harper Flamingo","offers":[{"title":"Empress of the Splendid Season | Oscar Hijuelos | Hardcover | 9780060175702 | Used: Very Good | Back Stacks D 1765464","offer_id":49374542954648,"sku":"1765464","price":8.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0492\/1609\/4360\/files\/71Oi6mbIxJL.jpg?v=1783001282","url":"https:\/\/roundaboutbookstore.com\/products\/empress-of-the-splendid-season-1","provider":"Roundabout Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}