John Irving

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The Cider House Rules

a ‘genius’ modern American classic

A Prayer For Owen Meany

Avenue of Mysteries

In One Person

The 158-Pound Marriage

The World According To Garp

My Movie Business

The Fourth Hand

Until I Find You

Last Night in Twisted River

Setting Free The Bears

The Hotel New Hampshire

A Son Of The Circus

A Widow For One Year

The Imaginary Girlfriend

Trying To Save Piggy Sneed

The Water-Method Man

Brutal reality and hallucination, comedy and pathos. A rich, unified tapestry

John Irving, it is abundantly clear, is a true artist. He is not afraid to take on great themes

John Irving has been compared with Kurt Vonnegut and J. D. Salinger, but is arguably more inventive than either

Three or four times as funny as most novels

Hunt the Villain

Wuthering Heights

White Nights

East of Eden

Fred 'Bogus' Trumper is a wayward knight-errant in the battle of the sexes and the pursuit of happiness. He also happens to have a complaint more serious than Portnoy's. Yet he stubbornly clings to the notion that he'll make something of his life, and is about to commit himself to a second marriage that bears remarkable resemblance to his first. 
 
The Water-Method Man is a work of cosummate artistry and comic invention, bizarre imagery and sharp social and psychological observation.

A modern classic from one of the world's greatest living writers.

John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942, and he once admitted that he was a 'grim' child. Although he excelled in English at school and knew by the time he graduated that he wanted to write novels, it was not until he met a young Southern novelist named John Yount, at the University of New Hampshire, that he received encouragement. 'It was so simple,' he remembers. 'Yount was the first person to point out that anything I did except writing was going to be vaguely unsatisfying.' 
 
In 1963, Irving enrolled at the Institute of European Studies in Vienna, and he later worked as a university lecturer. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, about a plot to release all the animals from the Vienna Zoo, was followed by The Water-Method Man, a comic tale of a man with a urinary complaint, and The 158-Pound Marriage, which exposes the complications of spouse-swapping. Irving achieved international recognition with The World According to Garp, which he hoped would 'cause a few smiles among the tough-minded and break a few softer hearts'. 
 
The Hotel New Hampshire is a startlingly original family saga, and The Cider House Rules is the story of Doctor Wilbur Larch - saint, obstetrician, founder of an orphanage, ether addict and abortionist - and of his favourite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted. A Prayer for Owen Meany features the most unforgettable character Irving has yet created. A Son of the Circus is an extraordinary evocation of modern day India. John Irving is also the author of the international bestsellers A Widow for One Year, The Fourth Hand and Until I Find You. 
 
A collection of John Irving's shorter writing, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed, was published in 1993. Irving has also written the screenplays for The Cider House Rules and A Son of the Circus, and wrote about his experiences in the world of movies in his memoir My Movie Business. 
 
Irving has had a life-long passion for wrestling, and he plays a wrestling referee in the film of The World According to Garp. In his memoir, The Imaginary Girlfriend, John Irving writes about his life as a wrestler, a novelist and as a wrestling coach. He now writes full-time, has three children and lives in Vermont and Toronto.

The Water-Method Man

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Brutal reality and hallucination, comedy and pathos. A rich, unified tapestry

John Irving, it is abundantly clear, is a true artist. He is not afraid to take on great themes

John Irving has been compared with Kurt Vonnegut and J. D. Salinger, but is arguably more inventive than either

Three or four times as funny as most novels

About John Irving

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