Imprint
- W&N
Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
The modern classic from one of the 20th century's greatest novelists
'The reason Homer Wells kept his name was that he came back to St Cloud's so many times, after so many failed foster homes, that the orphanage was forced to acknowledge Homer's intention to make St Cloud's his home.'
Homer Wells' odyssey begins among the apple orchards of rural Maine. As the oldest unadopted child at St Cloud's orphanage, he strikes up a profound and unusual friendship with Wilbur Larch, the orphanage's founder - a man of rare compassion and an addiction to ether. What he learns from Wilbur takes him from his early apprenticeship in the orphanage surgery, to an adult life running a cider-making factory and a strange relationship with the wife of his closest friend...
More books by John Irving
John Irving
John Irving, the novelist and screenwriter, competed as a wrestler for twenty years. He was Kurt Vonnegut's student in the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, where Mr. Irving later taught. In 1980, he 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, which also won a Maggie Award from Planned Parenthood-in recognition of exceptional achievement in the area of reproductive rights. In 2012 and 2013, Mr. Irving won two Lambda Literary Awards: for Bisexual Fiction, for In One Person; also a Bridge Builder Award, for writing empathetically about the LGBTQ community. His novels have been translated into more than thirty-five languages.
John Irving lives in Toronto. He is at work on a fifteenth novel-a ghost story, titled Darkness as a Bride-and he's in the process of adapting The World According to Garp as a television miniseries.
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