The World According to Garp

Winner of the National Book Award

“Nothing in contemporary fiction matches it.” —The New Republic

“Wonderful . . . full of energy and art, at once funny and horrifying and heartbreaking.” —Washington Post

Powerful and political, with unforgettable characters and timeless themes, The World According to Garp is John Irving’s breakout novel. The precursor of Irving’s later protest novels, it is the story of Jenny, an unmarried nurse who becomes a single mom and a feminist leader, beloved but polarizing—and of her son, Garp, less beloved but no less polarizing.   From the tragicomic tone of its first sentence to its mordantly funny last line—“we are all terminal cases”—The World According to Garp maintains a breakneck pace. The subject of sexual hatred and violence—of intolerance of sexual minorities, and sexual differences—runs through the book, as relevant now as ever. Available in more than forty countries—with more than ten million copies in print—Garp is a comedy with forebodings of doom.

Author Biography

JOHN IRVING, born in Exeter, New Hampshire, published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, when he was twenty-six. His most popular novel, worldwide, is A Prayer for Owen Meany, published in 1989. In 2000, Mr. Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2012, he won the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction for In One Person. In 2018, he was the recipient of a Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Richard C. Holbrooke Award for Distinguished Achievement. Mr. Irving competed as a wrestler for twenty years and coached wrestling until he was forty-seven. He is a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. John Irving lives in Toronto.