Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

For you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today, my guest is Oscar Iguelos. His new novel is a simple Habana melody from when the

world was good. He is, of course, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of the Mambo Kings play

songs of love. His other books include, let's see, I'm going to read them rather than do it

from heart. Our house in the last world, his first novel, The Fourteen Sisters of Amelia

Montez-O'Brien, Mr. Ives' Christmas,

and Empress of the Splendid Season. I think that the new book, A Simple Habana, Melody,

is really his most beautiful book and his best since Mombo Kings, and it's a pleasure to have him

here. Now, the reason why I think it's a pleasure to have him here.

Now, the reason why I think it's the best is that I think this marks a return to the subject of music.

And I wonder, what is it that makes music such an inspired subject for you? I think, Michael, that music is about emotion. I'd love anything

that inspires in me as I'm writing this, a new way, presents me with a new way of

exploring the way we as human beings move through the world. And music is also, for me,

something that's rather imagistic. And at the same time, it just provokes in me a lot of dreams.

And it helps me see the world that I'm trying to write about. And it helps me. I think, when I think about

what music does for people, I set out to do the same thing in my prose, which is to eliminate

a distance between the reader and the text and to draw them in in an intimate way. I find music is such a, again, to use that

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