292 followers
1,143 books added

John Irving

(John Winslow Irving)

(b.1942)

John Irving published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, in 1968. He has been nominated for a National Book Award three times - winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp. In 1992, Mr. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules - a film with seven Academy Award nominations. In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Last Night in Twisted River is John Irving's twelfth novel.

Genres: Literary Fiction

New and upcoming books

November 2025

Queen Esther
(Cider House Rules, book 2)

Series

Cider House Rules
1. The Cider House Rules (1985)
2. Queen Esther (2025)

Novels

   Setting Free the Bears (1968)
   The Water-Method Man (1972)
   The 158-Pound Marriage (1974)
   The World According to Garp (1978)
   The Hotel New Hampshire (1981)
   A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)
   A Son of the Circus (1994)
   A Widow for One Year (1998)
   The Fourth Hand (2001)
   Until I Find You (2005)
   Last Night in Twisted River (2009)
   In One Person (2012)
   Avenue of Mysteries (2015)
   The Last Chairlift (2022)

Collections

Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (1993)

Picture Books show

Non fiction show

Omnibus editions show

Books containing stories by John Irving

By the Book (2014)
Writers On Literature and the Literary Life
edited by
Pamela Paul

Award nominations

	2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction (longlist) : In One Person
	1978 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (nominee) : The World According to Garp

John Irving recommends

Among Friends (2025)
Hal Ebbott
"Exquisitely crafted."

The Road to Tender Hearts (2025)
Annie Hartnett
"A long-suffering family finds joy. A clairvoyant cat has premonitions of death and other supernatural talents. Vultures are hoping two orphaned children will stay alive. A dead daughter's hat talks to her father. A miraculous novel - an actual and spiritual road trip you won't forget."

Double Solitaire (2021)
(Quinn Farrell, book 1)
Craig Nova
"I wouldn't delay reading a novel Nova's, not even to complete one of my own."

Dante's Indiana (2021)
Randy Boyagoda
"A Divine Comedy of our times-a morality play of an Everyman. An ordinary English professor, struggling to hold his marriage together, finds himself working for holy rollers and scheming businessmen. Hysterically funny, but with an underlying sadness-such Heaven and Hell already coexist in America, and in this novel."

Old Lovegood Girls (2020)
Gail Godwin
"In this powerful, moving, and perfectly crafted novel, Gail Godwin's virtuoso dialogue and masterful handling of the passage of time illuminate the lifelong friendship of two women, college roommates who become writers-what they tell each other and what they leave unsaid, their loved ones, their dreams, their ghosts."

Go Ask Fannie (2018)
Elisabeth Hyde
"Elisabeth Hyde is a remarkably lucid and authoritative novelist."

The Wild Inside (2018)
Jamey Bradbury
"The Wild Inside is an unusual love story and a creepy horror novel — think of the Brontë sisters and Stephen King."

The End of Loneliness (2018)
Benedict Wells
"The trajectory of a long life, from childhood, through the adult disappointments, through parenthood: this is what novels do best. Our fate is everything we become; yet what happens to Jules and Alva, in the hands of Benedict Wells, is dazzling storytelling... The End of Loneliness is both affecting and accomplished — and eternal."

Lucky Supreme (2017)
(Darby Holland, book 1)
Jeff Johnson
"Jeff Johnson is a gifted and natural born storyteller."

The Kid (2016)
Ron Hansen
"Mr Hansen is a master of historical fiction."

The Nix (2016)
Nathan Hill
"Nathan Hill is the maestro of being terrific."

Decoy (2015)
Allan Gurganus
"Flawless Gurganus's narration becomes a Greek chorus, Sophocles in North Caroline."

Jack Holmes and His Friend (2012)
Edmund White
"Edmund White is one of the best writers of my generation; he's certainly the contemporary American writer I reread more than any other, and the one whose next book I look forward to reading most."

Because of Mr. Terupt (2010)
(Mr. Terupt, book 1)
Rob Buyea
"Even the accident toward which this novel is inevitably headed is no accident, it is as masterfully set up and skillfully concealed as the rest of this riveting story."

War Cries over Avenue C (1985)
Jerome Charyn
"Loved it!... Comic and frightening, and always convincing."

Vision Quest (1979)
Terry Davis
"The truest novel about growing up since The Catcher in the Rye."

An American Romance (1977)
John Casey
"This is a novekl of Proustian detail, rich and sensuous."

More recommendations

Visitors also looked at these authors

About Fantastic Fiction Information for Authors