A Hindi film star… an American missionary… twins separated at birth… a dwarf chauffeur… a serial killer… all are on a collision course. In the tradition of A Prayer for Owen Meany, Irving’s characters transcend nationality. They are misfits—coming from everywhere, belonging nowhere. Set almost entirely in India, this is John Irving’s most ambitious novel and a major publishing event

John Irving returns to the themes that established him as one of our most admired and beloved authors in this absorbing novel of fate and memory. As we grow older — most of all, in what we remember and what we dream — we live in the past. Sometimes, we live more vividly in the past than in the present. As an older man, Juan Diego will take a trip to the Philippines, but what travels with him are his dreams and memories; he is most alive in his childhood and early adolescence in Mexico. “An aura of fate had marked him,” John Irving writes, of Juan Diego. “The chain of events, the links in our lives — what leads us where we’re going, the courses we follow to our ends, what we don’t see coming, and what we do — all this can be mysterious, or simply unseen, or even obvious.” Avenue of Mysteries is the story of what happens to Juan Diego in the Philippines, where what happened to him in the past — in Mexico — collides with his future

A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love—tormented, funny, and affecting—and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a “sexual suspect,” a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 in his landmark novel of “terminal cases,” The World According to Garp. His most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving’s In One Person is a poignant tribute to Billy’s friends and lovers—a theatrical cast of characters who defy category and convention. Not least, In One Person is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself “worthwhile.” “This tender exploration of nascent desire, of love and loss, manages to be sweeping, brilliant, political, provocative, tragic, and funny—it is precisely the kind of astonishing alchemy we associate with a John Irving novel. The unfolding of the AIDS epidemic in the United States in the ’80s was the defining moment for me as a physician. With my patients’ deaths, almost always occurring in the prime of life, I would find myself cataloging the other losses—namely, what these people might have offered society had they lived the full measure of their days: their art, their literature, the children they might have raised. In One Person is the novel that for me will define that era. A profound truth is arrived at in these pages. It is Irving at his most daring, at his most ambitious. It is America and American writing, both at their very best.” “In One Person is a novel that makes you proud to be human. It is a book that not only accepts but also loves our differences. From the beginning of his career, Irving has always cherished our peculiarities—in a fierce, not a saccharine, way. Now he has extended his sympathies—and ours—still further into areas that even the misfits eschew. Anthropologists say that the interstitial—whatever lies between two familiar opposites—is usually declared either taboo or sacred. John Irving in this magnificent novel—his best and most passionate since The World According to Garp—has sacralized what lies between polarizing genders and orientations. And have I mentioned it is also a gripping page-turner and a beautifully constructed work of art?”

Patrick Wallingford no tiene la culpa de que las mujeres lo encuentren irresistible. Aunque su pasividad vital y su desdibujada personalidad sean irritantes, todas desean acostarse con él, y lo cierto es que no les cuesta mucho conseguirlo. Wallingford es periodista en un canal televisivo peligrosamente decantado hacia el sensacionalismo hasta que, en un tragicómico episodio laboral pierde la mano izquierda y se convierte de pronto en noticia mundial

From the author of A Widow for One Year, A Prayer for Owen Meany and other acclaimed novels, comes a story of a father and a son – fugitives in 20th-century North America. In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, a twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, pursued by the constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them. In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River – John Irving's twelfth novel – depicts the recent half-century in the United States as a world 'where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.' From the novel's taut opening sentence – 'The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long.' – to its elegiac final chapter, what distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author's unmistakable voice, the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller

Set among the apple orchards of rural Maine, it is a perverse world in which Homer Wells' odyssey begins. As the oldest unadopted offspring at St Cloud's orphanage, he learns about the skills which, one way or another, help young and not-so-young women, from Wilbur Larch, the orphanage's founder, a man of rare compassion with an addiction to ether. Dr Larch loves all his orphans, especially Homer Wells. It is Homer's story we follow, from his early apprenticeship in the orphanage, to his adult life running a cider-making factory and his strange relationship with the wife of his closest friend

The Fourth Hand asks an interesting question: “How can anyone identify a dream of the future?” The answer: “Destiny is not imaginable, except in dreams or to those in love.” While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; millions of TV viewers witness the accident. In Boston, a renowned hand surgeon awaits the opportunity to perform the nation’s first hand transplant; meanwhile, in the distracting aftermath of an acrimonious divorce, the surgeon is seduced by his housekeeper. A married woman in Wisconsin wants to give the one-handed reporter her husband's left hand-that is, after her husband dies. But the husband is alive, relatively young, and healthy. This is how John Irving’s tenth novel begins; it seems, at first, to be a comedy, perhaps a satire, almost certainly a sexual farce. Yet, in the end, The Fourth Hand is as realistic and emotionally moving as any of Mr. Irving’s previous novels-including The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for One Year—or his Oscar-winning screenplay of The Cider House Rules. The Fourth Hand is characteristic of John Irving’s seamless storytelling and further explores some of the author’s recurring themes—loss, grief, love as redemption. But this novel also breaks new ground; it offers a penetrating look at the power of second chances and the will to change

John living 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 he has yet created. A Son of the Circus is an extraordinary evocation of modern day India. John Irving latest and most ambitious novel is A Widow for One Year. Copyright © Garp Enterprises Ltd 1981 “A Birthday Candle” Copyright © 1957 by Donald Justice. This poem first appeared in The New Yorker. “On the death of Friends and Childhood” Copyright © 1959 by Donald Justice. “Love Stratagems” Copyright © 1958 by Donald Justice. This poem first appeared in The New Yorker. “To a Ten-Months’ Child” Copyright © 1960 by Donald Justice. “Tales from a Family Album” Copyright © 1957 by Donald Justice. These poems reprinted from The Summer Anniversaries by permission of Wesleyan University Press. “The Evening of the Mind” Copyright © 1965 by Donald Justice. This poem first appeared in Poetry. “The Tourist from Syracuse” Copyright © 1965 by Donald Justice. “Men of Forty” Copyright © 1966 by Donald Justice. This poem first appeared in Poetry. These poems reprinted from Night Light by permission of Wesleyan University Press. “I Forgot To Forget” Copyright © by permission of Stanley Kesler; Highlow Music Inc. 639 Madison Avenue, Memphis, Tn. 38130. “I Love You Because” by Leon Payne Copyright © 1949 by Fred Rose Music, Inc. Used by permission of the Publisher. All rights reserved. The novelist is indebted to the following works and wishes to express his gratitude to the authors: Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, by Carl E. Schorske; A Nervous Splendor, by Frederic Morton; Vienna Inside-Out, by J. Sydney Jones; Vienna, by David Pryce-Jones and the Editors of Time-Life Books; Lucia di Lammermoor, by Gaetano Donizetti, the Dover Opera Guide and Libretto Series, (introduced and translated by Ellen H. Bleiler); and The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud. With special thanks to Donald Justice. And with special thanks and special affection—to Lesley Claire and the Sonoma County Rape Crisis Center of Santa Rosa, California. On July 18, 1980 the Stanhope Hotel on Eighty-first and Fifth Avenue changed management and ownership and became the American Stanhope—a fine hotel currently not beset by the problems of the Stanhope described in this fiction

This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields—a feminist leader ahead of her times This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes—even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with “lunacy and sorrow”; yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust. In more than thirty languages, in more than forty countries—with more than ten million copies in print—this novel provides almost cheerful, even hilarious evidence of its famous last line: “In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.”

Nacida para sustituir, en cierto modo, a dos hermanos muertos en un accidente, Ruth Cole vive una infancia muy especial. En el verano de 1958, cuando ella tiene cuatro años, Marion, su madre, tras una tórrida aventura con un jovencito de dieciséis, abandona el hogar. Ruth se queda con su padre, con el que mantiene una relación de amor-odio marcada por la rivalidad. Pero, andando el tiempo, a sus treinta y seis años, Ruth se ha convertido en una mujer atractiva y en una escritora de éxito, y, pese a su personalidad compleja y difícil, cuatro años después no sólo se ha casado, sino que tiene un hijo, enviuda y, por si fuera poco, se enamora por primera vez. Lo que no podía prever era la reaparición de la inquietante Marion…

Until I Find You is the story of the actor Jack Burns — his life, loves, celebrity and astonishing search for the truth about his parents. When he is four years old, Jack travels with his mother Alice, a tattoo artist, to several North Sea ports in search of his father, William Burns. From Copenhagen to Amsterdam, William, a brilliant church organist and profligate womanizer, is always a step ahead — has always just departed in a wave of scandal, with a new tattoo somewhere on his body from a local master or “scratcher.” Alice and Jack abandon their quest, and Jack is educated at schools in Canada and New England — including, tellingly, a girls’ school in Toronto. His real education consists of his relationships with older women — from Emma Oastler, who initiates him into erotic life, to the girls of St. Hilda’s, with whom he first appears on stage, to the abusive Mrs. Machado, whom he first meets when sent to learn wrestling at a local gym. Too much happens in this expansive, eventful novel to possibly summarize it all. Emma and Jack move to Los Angeles, where Emma becomes a successful novelist and Jack a promising actor. A host of eccentric minor characters memorably come and go, including Jack’s hilariously confused teacher the Wurtz; Michelle Maher, the girlfriend he will never forget; and a precocious child Jack finds in the back of an Audi in a restaurant parking lot. We learn about tattoo addiction and movie cross-dressing, “sleeping in the needles” and the cure for cauliflower ears. And John Irving renders his protagonist’s unusual rise through Hollywood with the same vivid detail and range of emotions he gives to the organ music Jack hears as a child in European churches. This is an absorbing and moving book about obsession and loss, truth and storytelling, the signs we carry on us and inside us, the traces we can’t get rid of. Jack has always lived in the shadow of his absent father. But as he grows older — and when his mother dies — he starts to doubt the portrait of his father’s character she painted for him when he was a child. This is the cue for a second journey around Europe in search of his father, from Edinburgh to Switzerland, towards a conclusion of great emotional force. A melancholy tale of deception, Until I Find You is also a swaggering comic novel, a giant tapestry of life’s hopes. It is a masterpiece to compare with John Irving’s great novels, and restates the author’s claim to be considered the most glorious, comic, moving novelist at work today

Autobiografia Johna Irvinga napisana jest, podobnie jak powieści jego autorstwa, z dystansem, ironią, a ponadto z dużą dozą samokrytycyzmu. Wspomnienia autora skupiają się wokół pasji jego życia, którą zaskakująco okazują się zapasy. Przez wiele lat Irving uważał się przede wszystkim za zapaśnika, a dopiero w drugiej kolejności za pisarza. Książka jest zbiorem zwięzłych, autoironicznych wspomnień przedstawionych z właściwym Irvingowi humorem, lekkością. Jego styl posiada jedną z najbardziej cenionych przez Czytelnika cech, którą jest wrażenie intymności oraz bliskości z autorem. Zapasy okazują się pretekstem do przedstawienia rozlicznych fascynacji Irvinga, zwłaszcza tych literackich, oraz wspomnień związanych z najbliższymi. Czytelnik dowie się ponadto o wieloletniej przyjaźni Johna Irvinga z jego mistrzem duchowym Kurtem Vonnegutem, który skłonił go do pisania. Okazuje się, że bodźcem do napisania wspomnień była nie pycha, ale złamane ramię, czyli pośrednio zapasy

Джон Ирвинг – признанный мастер психологической прозы. Мировую известность принес ему роман «Мир от Гарпа», хорошо известный и российскому читателю. «Правила Дома сидра» можно назвать семейной сагой на новый лад, «Дэвидом Копперфильдом» или «Джейн Эйр» наоборот. Сирота без роду и племени обретает свой семейный очаг, но дом уже не является той крепостью, за стенами которой можно укрыться от бурь и катаклизмов нашего жестокого века. На смену жизненным правилам, призванным обеспечить честную и спокойную жизнь, приходят новые, куда более жесткие. Но и следуя им, человек обречен – ведь ему приходится отказываться от своего прошлого, от традиций и нравственных ценностей. Есть ли выход из этого заколдованного круга?

Действие романа разворачивается в университетской среде одного из восточных штатов. Автор переплетает судьбы двух супружеских пар самым причудливым образом, вскрывая на глазах читателей слой за слоем самые глубинные и темные тайники человеческой личности. Пытаясь вернуть остроту своим эротическим ощущениям, герои идут на смелый эксперимент. Но человеческие отношения не поддаются планированию как простая игра