Owen Meany

john irving

Eleven-year-old Owen Meany, playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire, hits a foul ball and kills his best friend's mother. Owen doesn't believe in accidents; he believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul is both extraordinary and terrifying. At moments a comic, self-deluded victim, but in the end the principal, tragic actor in a divine plan, Owen Meany is the most heartbreaking hero John Irving has yet created.

Genres fictionclassicsbook clubcontemporaryliteratureliterary fictionhistorical fictionnovelscoming of ageaudiobook

852 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1989

Places

toronto ontario, new hampshire, canada, ontario,

This edition

Format: 852 pages, Paperback
Published: January 1, 1992 by Diogenes Verlag AG,Switzerland
ISBN: 9783257224917
ASIN: 3257224915
Language: German

Characters More characters

Owen Meany

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John Wheelwright

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About the author

john irving

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.
Mr. Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times—winning once, in 1980, for his novel The World According to Garp. He received an O. Henry Award in 1981 for his short story “Interior Space.” In 2000, Mr. Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for his novel In One Person.
An international writer—his novels have been translated into more than thirty-five languages—John Irving lives in Toronto. His all-time best-selling novel, in every language, is A Prayer for Owen Meany.
Avenue of Mysteries is his fourteenth novel.