Queen Esther
A novel
After 40 years, John Irving revisits the setting of his classic novel, The Cider House Rules—the orphanage in St. Cloud’s, Maine, where a Jewish girl, not yet four, is abandoned one winter night.
Esther Nacht is born in Vienna in 1905. Her father dies on board a ship from Bremerhaven to Portland, Maine; anti-Semites murder her mother in Portland. In the orphanage at St. Cloud’s, it’s clear to Dr. Larch that the abandoned child not only knows she’s Jewish; she’s familiar with the biblical Queen Esther she was named for. Dr. Larch knows it won’t be easy to find a Jewish family to adopt Esther; he won’t find any family who’ll adopt her.
When Esther is fourteen, about to become a ward…
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 competed as a wrestler for twenty years, and coached wrestling until he was forty-seven. In 1992, he was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Mr. Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times—winning once, in 1980, for his novel The World According to Garp. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2013, Mr. Irving won a Lambda Literary Award for his novel In One Person. Internationally renowned, his books have been translated into more than thirty-five…
Queen Esther
John Irving
The Last Chairlift
John Irving
The World According to Garp
John Irving; Introduction by John Irving
Avenue of Mysteries
John Irving
In One Person
John Irving
The Imaginary Girlfriend
John Irving
Trying to Save Piggy Sneed
John Irving
Last Night in Twisted River
John Irving
Until I Find You
John Irving
The Fourth Hand
John Irving
A Christmas Carol and Other Stories
Charles Dickens Introduction by John Irving
A Prayer for Owen Meany
John Irving