A Prayer For Owen Meany

A masterpiece from one of the great contemporary American writers.'A work of genius' Independent'Marvellously funny . . . What better entertainment is there than a serious book which makes you laugh?' Spectator'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.'Summer, 1953. In the small town of Gravesend, New Hampshire, eleven-year-old John Wheelwright and his best friend Owen Meany are playing in a Little League baseball game. When Owen hits a foul ball which kills John's mother, their lives are changed in an instant.It is dismissed as a tragic accident but Owen disagrees. He believes that he is God's instrument, put on Earth for a higher purpose. And as the boys come into adulthood to the background of the Vietnam War, a series of remarkable events show that perhaps Owen's divine plan was not imagined after all.Discover the funny yet poignant classic by the bestselling author of The World According to Garp.'So extraordinary, so original, and so enriching' Stephen King, The Washington Post'May justly join the classic American list' Anthony Burgess, Observer

Runner-up for The BBC Big Read Top 100 2003 Short-listed for BBC Big Read Top 100 2003

“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”

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
Intelligent, exhilarating and darkly comic Dickensian in scope. Quite stunning Los Angeles Times
So extraordinary, so original, and so enriching -- Stephen King The Washington Post

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.

'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.

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