The World According to Garp

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Turtleback, Jun 23, 1997 - Fiction
It's the novel that made author John Irving a household name -- and launched his consistently bestselling career as one of the world's most beloved storytellers. Now, "The World According To GARP" takes its place among the distinguished titles of the Ballantine Readers Circle.

This is the life and times of T.S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields -- a feminist leader ahead of her times. This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes -- even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with "lunacy and sorrow"; yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust. In more than thirty languages, in more than forty countries -- with more than ten million copies in print -- this novel provides almost cheerful, even hilarious evidence of its famous last line: "In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases".

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About the author (1997)

John Irving published his first novel at the age of twenty-six. He has received awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation; he has won an O. Henry Award, a National Book Award, and an Academy Award.

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