A Prayer For Owen Meany: a ‘genius’ modern American classic

New
Paperback
1990
$12.34

'If you care about something you have to protect it. If you're lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it'. 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 ball is both extraordinary and terrifying.

Synopsis

'If you care about something you have to protect it. If you're lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it'. 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 ball is both extraordinary and terrifying.

$12.34

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 636
Edition: 1
Publisher: Black Swan
Published: 01 May 1990
ISBN 10: 0552993697
ISBN 13: 9780552993692
Book Overview: A masterpiece from one of the great contemporary American writers.
Prizes: Runner-up for The BBC Big Read Top 100 2003. Shortlisted for BBC Big Read Top 100 2003.

Media Reviews

I believe it to be a work of genius... because of its absolutely irrepressible flow of invention and suggestion, expressed in some of the most fascinating prose written in fiction today. Originality has distinguished all Mr Irving's books, but in A Prayer For Owen Meany it achieves a new pitch and a new profundity * Independent *
Marvellously funny... What better entertainment is there than a serious book which makes you laugh? * Spectator *
So extraordinary, so original, and so enriching * The Washington Post *
May justly join the classic American list * Observer *
A heartbreaking masterpiece of a novel... tremendously ambitious and fiendishly clever -- Dominic Holland * Sunday Express *

Author Bio

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. He also received an O. Henry Award in 1981 for the short story 'Interior Space'. In 1992, he was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won the 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. His most recent novel is Last Night in Twisted River.