Life of Black Hawk, or Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak
A Thousand Acres

The World According to Garp

Powerful and political, with unforgettable characters and timeless themes, The World According to Garp is John Irving’s breakout novel. The precursor of Irving’s later protest novels, it is the story of Jenny, an unmarried nurse who becomes a single mom and a feminist leader, beloved but polarizing—and of her son, Garp, less beloved but no less polarizing.

From the tragicomic tone of its first sentence to its mordantly funny last line—“we are all terminal cases”—The World According to Garp maintains a breakneck pace. The subject of sexual hatred and violence—of intolerance of sexual minorities, and sexual differences—runs through the book, as relevant now as ever. Available in more than forty countries—with more than ten million copies in print—Garp is a comedy with forebodings of doom.

More Adult, Non-Juvenile Books

  • It was not until the mid-1970s that a new generation of Japanese American writers and scholars recognized the novel's importance and popularized it as one of literature's most powerful testaments to the Asian American experience.

  • Eskimo and white culture collide in this national bestselling novel of life in the contemporary Alaskan wilderness.

  • In Our Migrant Souls, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Héctor Tobar offers a profound exploration of Latino identity in contemporary America. He addresses the historical and social forces shaping this identity while giving voice to the frustrations and aspirations of young Latinos, who have navigated a landscape marked by division and misunderstanding.

    Read More about "Our Migrant Souls"...

  • "In the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time, Octavia Butler's 'Parable' books may be unmatched."--The New Yorker