John Irving | Biography, Books, Novels, Queen Esther, Garp, & Facts

Early life, education, and teaching career

He was initially named after his father, John Blunt, but his mother changed his name following her divorce and subsequent remarriage. Irving attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where he took up wrestling—which would remain a lifelong passion and recurring theme in his writing—and struggled academically because of dyslexia. Following his graduation in 1962, he spent time at the Universities of Pittsburgh and Vienna before receiving a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of New Hampshire (1965) and a master’s degree in English from the University of Iowa (1967). From 1967 to 1978 Irving taught at a number of colleges and universities, including Windham College (now Landmark College, in Vermont), the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Mount Holyoke College, and Brandeis University (both in Massachusetts).

First novels and The World According to Garp

Setting Free the Bears, begun as his master’s thesis, was published in 1968. The novel, a latter-day picaresque, charts the exploits of two college dropouts as they journey through Austria by motorcycle and plot the liberation of the titular bruins and other denizens of the Vienna Zoo. Both Irving’s debut and the subsequent The Water-Method Man (1972) received enthusiastic notices, but The 158-Pound Marriage (1974) was roundly panned.

The World According to Garp, however, struck a chord with the international reading public. Infused with comedy and violence, Irving’s breakthrough book chronicles the tragic life and death of the novelist T.S. Garp. Rife with his signature milieus and motifs—the rarefied universes of the New England private school and of Vienna, wrestling, infidelity, feminism, and absent fathers—the tragicomic novel won Irving a passionate following. In 1979 The World According to Garp was a finalist for the National Book Awards for fiction and in 1980 won the National Book Award in the paperback fiction category. It was made into a film in 1982, directed by George Roy Hill and starring Robin Williams as Garp and Glenn Close and John Lithgow in Oscar-nominated supporting roles.

The Hotel New Hampshire, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and The Cider House Rules

In The Hotel New Hampshire (1981; film 1984), concerning a family of unconventional personalities beset by tragedy, and A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989; adapted as the film Simon Birch, 1998), about the effects of a diminutive boy with messianic qualities on the life of the narrator, Irving continued to refine his use of hyperbole and the surreal to illuminate the human condition. A Son of the Circus (1994), an unevenly received amalgam of crime novel conceits and identity politics set in India, was followed by A Widow for One Year (1998; adapted as the film The Door in the Floor, 2008) and The Fourth Hand (2001).

Irving received an Academy Award for the screenplay of the 1999 film version of his novel The Cider House Rules (1985), which is mainly set in an orphanage in Maine in the early 20th century and explores the ethical complexities of abortion. His collection Trying to Save Piggy Sneed—which includes short stories and essays—and his autobiography, The Imaginary Girlfriend, were both published in 1996. My Movie Business (1999) details Irving’s experiences in adapting his novels to the screen.

Later novels and other books

Later novels—in which the autobiographical threads present throughout his oeuvre become more pronounced—include Until I Find You (2005), which draws on elements of Irving’s molestation at the hands of an older woman as a child, and Last Night in Twisted River (2009), which plots the bizarre course of a writer’s path to success. In One Person (2012) explores sexual identity, while Avenue of Mysteries (2015) is about a Mexican writer’s remembrance of his unusual past. In 2022 Irving published his 15th novel, The Last Chairlift. A sprawling work about families, it centers on a writer who has an unconventional childhood and later attempts to learn the identity of his father.

Irving returned to the setting of his beloved novel The Cider House Rules in Queen Esther (2025), which follows a Jewish teenager who is adopted from St. Cloud’s Orphanage by a non-Jewish couple to serve as a nanny to their youngest child.