3 Review(s)

The iconic coming-of-age novel that made John Irving a household name A special limited edition of nine classic novels produced to coincide with Weidenfeld & Nicolson's 60th anniversary. Designed by the award-winning advertising agency Fallon with special endpapers commissioned from ground-breaking artists. The endpapers for this title have been designed by Karl Grandin. Heir to a shoe-manufacturing fortune and a Wellesley dropout, Jenny Fields becomes a nurse, which isn't quite the thing for a girl of her station. Nor is her decision to reject the world of men - though only after taking advantage of the accidentally lobotomized war veteran, Technical Sergeant Garp. The product of their unconventional union, T.S. Garp follows in the writerly footsteps of his mother, whose memoir, 'A Sexual Suspect', has become an unlikely feminist bible. Plunged headlong into a world of transsexual ex-footballers and feminists who cut their own tongues out, and now with a third generation on his hands, Garp struggles in his writings to make sense of an existence 'filled with lunacy and sorrow', where, as his mentor puts it, 'we are all terminal cases'. About the Author John Irving was born in New Hampshire. He studied at universities in America and Europe and published his first novel at the age of twenty-six. Several of his novels have been made into films, and in 2000 he was awarded an Oscar for the screenplay for THE CIDER HOUSE RULES. In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Vermont and Toronto.