Posts by Sneed
Queen Esther
For readers or moviegoers who know The Cider House Rules, a familiar character reappears in QUEEN ESTHER—John Irving’s sixteenth novel. Dr. Wilbur Larch is younger than you remember him, and the unadopted orphans at St. Cloud’s are a different cast of characters—a Viennese-born Jew, Esther Nacht, among them. Like The Cider House Rules, QUEEN ESTHER is a historical novel with a political theme. Anti-Semitism shapes Esther’s life, not only in Vienna. Esther’s story is fated to intersect with Israel’s history.
Read MoreJohn Irving Short Bio
JOHN IRVING was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was twenty-six. He has written sixteen novels over the course of his prolific career, the majority of which have been international bestsellers. In 1980, Irving won a National Book Award for his…
Read MoreMedia Contacts
John Irving can be reached through his representatives below. Media & Publishing Simon & Schuster US Knopf Canada Simon & Schuster UK Representation CookeMcDermid Literary Agency Intercontinental Literary Agency Speaking Engagements Lyceum Agency
Read MoreThe Last Chairlift
One of the world’s greatest authors returns with his first novel in seven years—a ghost story and a love story, spanning eight decades of sexual politics.
Read MoreAvenue of Mysteries
Juan Diego—a fourteen-year-old boy, who was born and grew up in Mexico—has a thirteen-year-old sister. Her name is Lupe, and she thinks she sees what’s coming—specifically, her own future and her brother’s. Lupe is a mind reader; she doesn’t know what everyone is thinking, but she knows what most people are thinking. Regarding what has happened, as opposed to what will, Lupe is usually right about the past; without your telling her, she knows all the worst things that have happened to you.
Read MoreAn Introduction to John Irving
Superior fiction asks three things of the novelist: Vigorous feeling for life as we live it. Then imaginative force, strong enough to subvert and rebuild unhindered. And then–but this is rare and so essential that we might call it the “reality principle” of fiction– shrewd sense to keep the first two locked in stubborn love with each other –Terrence Des Pres
Read MoreAbout the Author
His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was twenty-six. He has written sixteen novels over the course of his prolific career, the majority of which have been international bestsellers. In 1980, Irving won a National Book Award for his novel The World According to Garp. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules.
Read MoreIn One Person
Billy is not me. He comes from my imagining what I might have been like if I’d acted on all my earliest impulses as a young teenager… As Billy learns—in part, from being bisexual—our genders and orientations do not define us. We are somehow greater than our sexual identities, but our sexual identities matter. —John Irving
Read MoreLast Night in Twisted River
I always begin with a last sentence; then I work my way backwards, through the plot, to where the story should begin. The last sentence I began with this time is as follows: “He felt that the great adventure of his life was just beginning—as his father must have felt, in the throes and dire circumstances of his last night in Twisted River.”
Read MoreUntil I Find You
John Irving’s eleventh novel, Until I Find You, is the story of the actor Jack Burns. His mother, Alice, is a Toronto tattoo artist. When Jack is four, he travels with Alice to several Baltic and North Sea ports; they are trying to find Jack’s missing father, William, a church organist who is addicted to being tattooed. But Alice is a mystery, and William can’t be found. Even Jack’s memories are subject to doubt.
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