The World According to Garp

A Novel

Author John Irving

Introduction by John Irving

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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…

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November 13, 2018

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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…