John Irving

Liebe und Tod, Leidenschaft und Vergänglichkeit, Wirklichkeit und Fiktion sind die Pole, zwischen denen der Puls des neuen Romans von John Irving schlägt. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Schriftstellerin Ruth Cole, eine starke und verletzliche Frau, die mit ihren Büchern Erfolg und mit ihren Freunden Pech hat... Umwerfend komisch und aufwühlend.

Eine Weltpremiere: John Irvings erstes Kinderbuch, hinreißend illustriert von Tatjana Hauptmann.

Während einer Indienreportage wird einem New Yorker Journalisten vor laufender Kamera die linke Hand von einem hungrigen Zirkuslöwen aufgefressen; Millionen Fernsehzuschauer sind Zeugen des Unfalls. In Boston wartet ein verschrobener Handchirurg auf eine Gelegenheit, die erste amerikanische Handtransplantation vorzunehmen. Und eine junge Ehefrau in Wisconsin hat es sich in den Kopf gesetzt, dem einhändigen Reporter die linke Hand ihres Mannes zu geben - wenn dieser stirbt. Doch der Mann ist jung und kerngesund.

Mozart's piano concertos stand alongside his operas and symphonies as his most frequently performed and best loved music. They have attracted the attention of generations of musicologists who have explored their manifold meanings from a variety of viewpoints. In this study, John Irving brings together the various strands of scholarship surrounding Mozart's concertos including analytical approaches, aspects of performance practice and issues of compositional genesis based on investigation of manuscript and early printed editions. Treating the concertos collectively as a repertoire, rather than as individual works, the first section of the book tackles broad thematic issues such as the role of the piano concerto in Mozart's quasi-freelance life in late eighteenth-century Vienna, the origin of his concertos in earlier traditions of concerto writing; eighteenth-century theoretical frameworks for the understanding of movement forms, subsequent historical shifts in the perception of the concerto's form, listening strategies and performance practices. This is followed by a 'documentary register' which proceeds through all 23 original works, drawing together information on the source materials. Accounts of the concertos' compositional genesis, early performance history and reception are also included here, drawing extensively on the Mozart family correspondence and other contemporary reports. Drawing together and synthesizing this wealth of material, Irving provides an invaluable reference source for those already familiar with this repertoire.

'Imagine a young man on his way to a less-than-thirty-second event - the loss of his left hand, long before he reached middle age.'While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion;

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKWhile reporting a story from India, New York journalist Patrick Wallingford inadvertently becomes his own headline when his left hand is eaten by a lion. In Boston, a renowned surgeon eagerly awaits the opportunity to perform the nation's first hand transplant. But what if the donor's widow demands visitation rights with the hand? In answering this unexpected question, John Irving has written a novel that is by turns brilliantly comic and emotionally moving, offering a penetrating look at the power of second chances and the will to change. Praise for The Fourth Hand"A rich and deeply moving tale . . . Vintage Irving: a story of two very disparate people, and the strange and unexpected ways we grow . . . Irving's novels are perceptive and precise reflections of the world around us."--The Washington Post Book World "A blend of sexual farce, journalistic satire, and tender love story . . . From what at first seems bizarre, Irving builds the best kind of love story: an improbable one. Wallingford gets more than a transplanted hand; he begins to find his soul."--USA Today "A riveting entertainment and certainly one of the funniest novels of the year. The authoritative control of Irving's storytelling has never been more impressive. . . . The delighted reader is powerless to look away."--Chicago Sun-Times " A] thoroughly satisfying literary experience . . . Irving's most compassionate and redemptive novel] to date . . . His] mastery of characterization is unequaled in American novelists of the day."--St. Louis Post-Dispatch "A beautiful story about the redemptive power of love."--The Denver Post

Von der Vorliebe für dicke Bücher und ihren verheerenden Folgen für den Schulbesuch, vom unwirtlichen Wien, von literarischen Wegbegleitern aller Art, von Irvings Frauen und Söhnen und immer wieder vom Ringen erzählt dieses amüsante, reich bebilderte Selbstportrait für alle Irving-Fans.

"A Widow For One Year will appeal to readers who like old-fashioned storytelling mixed with modern sensitivities. . . . Irving is among the few novelists who can write a novel about grief and fill it with ribald humor soaked in irony."--USA Today In A Widow for One Year, we follow Ruth Cole through three of the most pivotal times in her life: from her girlhood on Long Island (in the summer of 1958) through the fall of 1990 (when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career), and at last in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother (and she's about to fall in love for the first time). Both elegiac and sensual, A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force. Praise for A Widow for One Year "Compelling . . . By turns antic and moving, lusty and tragic, A Widow for One Year is bursting with memorable moments. . . . A testament to one of life's most difficult lessons: In the end, you just have to find a way to keep going."--San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle "A sprawling 19th-century production, chock full of bizarre coincidences, multiple plot lines, lengthy digressions, and stories within stories. . . . An engaging and often affecting fable, a fairy tale that manages to be old-fashioned and modern all at once."--The New York Times " Irving's] characters can beguile us onto thin ice and persuade us to dance there. His instinctive mark is the moral choice stripped bare, and his aim is impressive. What's more, there's hardly a writer alive who can match his control of the omniscient point of view."--The Washington Post Book World "In the sprawling, deeply felt A Widow for One Year, John Irving has delivered his best novel since The World According to Garp. . . . Like a warm bath, it's a great pleasure to immerse yourself in."--Entertainment Weekly "John Irving is arguably the American Balzac, or perhaps our Dickens--a rip-roaring storyteller whose intricate plot machinery is propelled by good old-fashioned greed, foolishness and passion."--The Nation "Powerful . . . a masterpiece."--St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Neljäs valtiomahti, joukkoviestimet, on innoittanut Irwingin kirjoittamaan romaanin naistenmies ja televisiotoimittaja Patrick Wallingfordin seikkailuista katastrofijournalistiikan maailmassa. Hän selostaa parhaillaan juttua Intiasta, kun sirkusleijona hotkaisee häneltä vasemman käden – miljoonien tv-katsojien seuratessa. Bostonissa taas kuuluisa käsikirurgi odottaa tilaisuutta tehdä valtakunnan ensimmäinen kädensiirto. Ja Wisconsinissa muuan aviovaimo haluaisi antaa käsipuolelle toimittajalle oman miehensä vasemman käden – siis sitten kun mies on kuollut. Mutta tämä on elossa ja vielä kohtalaisen nuori ja tervekin. Aluksi John Irwingin kymmenes romaani näyttää olevan komedia, ehkä satiirikin, ja aivan varmasti seksuaalifarssi. Mutta vähitellen kohoavat esiin Irwingin pysyvät teemat, menetys, suru ja pelastava rakkaus, nyt ehkä entistäkin väkevämpinä onnettomuuksilla ja järkytyksillä mässäilevän journalistiikan taustaa vasten.

Verführerisch bunt und schillernd wie Bombay, unberechenbar magisch und spannend wie ein akrobatischer Seiltrick, das ist John Irvings lang erwarteter Roman 'Zirkuskind', ein Arzt- und Zirkusdrama der ganz anderen Art. Dr. Daruwalla sucht das 'Zwergen-Gen' und einen Golfplatzmörder. Was er findet, ist Possenspiel und Grusel zugleich.

After two producers, four directors, thirteen years, and uncounted rewrites, the movie version of John Irving's acclaimed novel, The Cider House Rules, at last made it to the big screen. Here is the author's account of the novel-to-film process. Anecdotal, affectionate, and delightfully candid, My Movie Business dazzles with Irving's incomparable wit and style.

'One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole awoke to the sound of lovemaking - it was coming from her parents' bedroom.'This is the story of Ruth Cole. and in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother.

In A Widow for One Year, we follow Ruth Cole through three of the most pivotal times in her life: from her girlhood on Long Island (in the summer of 1958) through the fall of 1990 (when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career), and at last in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother (and she's about to fall in love for the first time). Both elegiac and erotic, A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force.

The six string quartets dedicated to his friend Joseph Haydn represent a turning point in Mozart’s compositional development. In addition to providing a full synopsis of each quartet this book examines the music in relation to Mozart’s earlier quartets, considers the genesis of the six ‘Haydn’ quartets through close examination of the autograph revisions and looks at contemporary eighteenth-century analytical models. John Irving also charts the reception of the quartets, drawing upon a broad range of sources: Mozart’s letters and diary entries, early newspaper reports, harmony/compositional textbooks, contemporary criticism and early biographies.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - John Irving's classic novel about a troubled doctor, the conflicted young orphan he mentors, and what it means to be of use in the world--the basis for the Academy Award-winning film starring Tobey Maguire, Michael Caine, and Charlize Theron "Witty, tenderhearted, fervent . . . This novel is an example, now rare, of the courage of imaginative ardor."--The New York Times Book Review "Good night " he would call. "Good night--you princes of Maine, you kings of New England " Homer Wells grows up in a rural Maine orphanage under the tutelage of Dr. Wilbur Larch, a physician who both delivers babies and performs illegal abortions. Dr. Larch trains Homer in obstetrics and gynecology, hoping the boy will follow in his footsteps. Yet Homer refuses, unwilling to conduct the procedures. Homer seizes the opportunity to leave the orphanage after meeting Wally and Candy, an attractive couple who come to Dr. Larch seeking an abortion. While working on the apple orchard owned by Wally's parents, Homer falls in love and soon begins an illicit affair. Fifteen years later, a shocking discovery leads Homer to back to the orphanage--and to a decision that will ultimately alter the course of his life. First published in 1985, The Cider House Rules explores the nature of love, the complexities of found family, and the unpredictable consequences of our moral choices.

"John Irving, it is abundantly clear, is a true artist."--Los Angeles Times Fred "Bogus" Trumper has troubles. A divorced, broke graduate student of Old Norse in 1970s New York, Trumper is a wayward knight-errant in the battle of the sexes and the pursuit of happiness: His ex-wife has moved in with his childhood best friend, his life is the subject of a tell-all movie, and his chronic urinary tract infection requires surgery. Trumper is determined to change. There's only one problem: it seems the harder he tries to alter his adolescent ways, the more he is drawn to repeating the mistakes of the past. . . . Written when Irving was twenty-nine, Trumper's tale of woe is told with all the wit and humor that would become Irving's trademark. "Three or four times as funny as most novels."--The New Yorker Praise for The Water-Method Man "Friendship, marriage, and family are his primary themes, but at that blundering level of life where mishap and folly--something close to joyful malice--perpetually intrude and distrupt, often fatally. Life, in John] Irving's fiction, is always under siege. Harm and disarray are daily fare, as if the course of love could not run true. . . . Irving's multiple manner . . . his will to come at the world from different directions, is one of the outstandint traits of The World According to Garp, but this remarkable flair for . . . stories inside stories . . . isalready handled with mastery . . . and with a freedom almost wanton in The Water-Method Man which is Garp's predecessor by six years]."--Terrence Des Pres"Brutal reality and hallucination, comedy and pathos. A rich, unified tapestry."--Time

"Irving looks cunningly beyond the eye-catching gyrations of the mating dance to the morning-after implications."--The Washington Post The darker vision and sexual ambiguities of this sensual, ironic tale about a m nage a quatre in a New England university town foreshadow those of The World According to Garp; but this very trim and precise novel is a marked departure from the author's generally robust, boisterous style. Though Mr. Irving's cool eye spares none of his foursome, he writes with genuine compassion for the sexual tests and illusions they perpetrate on each other; but the sexual intrigue between them demonstrates how even the kind can be ungenerous, and even the well-intentioned, destructive. "One of the most remarkable things about John Irving's first three novels, viewed from the vantage of The World According to Garp, is that they can be read as one extended fictional enterprise. . . . The 158-Pound Marriage is as lean and concentrated as a mine shaft."--Terrence Des Pres "Deft, hard-hitting . . . What Irving demonstrates beautifully is that a one-to-one relationship is more demanding than a free-for-all."--The New York Times Book Review