A masterpiece from one of the great contemporary American writers.
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.
Daruwalla is another iconic Irving figure... Irving handles this
incarnadine combination of farce and horror with high speed skill,
creating a compulsively readable book
*Guardian*
[Irving] is at the peak of his powers... he plunges the reader into
one sensual or grotesque scene after another with cheerful vigour
and a madcap tenderness for life... entertainment on a grand
scale
*Economist*
More plot twists than the Ramayana and a cast of characters that
includes dwarves, prostitutes, movie stars, tranvestites and at
least one serial killer
*Daily Telegraph*
Irving has given us that treat of treats, a wide-ranging fiction of
massive design and length that encapsulates our world with
intelligence and sugars the pill with wit
*Mail on Sunday*
Daruwalla's quest for the truth is what sustains this book... a
writer with the courage to follow this difficult journey while also
exploring issues of poverty, racism and disease in a novel so full
of humour is a writer to be treasured
*The Times*
Though there are flashes here of the dramatic verve of The World According to Garp and Cider House Rules , Irving's long-awaited eighth novel is generally a tedious affair: rambling; lacking suspense; devoid of energetic or lyric prose; sometimes verging on farce and other times almost as lethargic as the sultry atmosphere of Bombay, where it is set. Here Irving is concerned again with people who do not feel at home in the world: immigrants, social outcasts, pariahs because of physical handicaps, those uncomfortable with their sexual orientation. The characters include a Bombay-born physician and secret screenwriter who feels as much a foreigner in India as he does in his new home, Toronto; a movie star who is synonymous with the role he plays; his twin brother, who aspires to be a priest but doubts his vocation; assorted circus performers, dwarfs and cripples, prostitutes, transsexuals, policemen, Hollywood figures, a blonde American hippie, Jesuit missionaries and more sad folk teeming with strange quirks and shameful secrets. The plot revolves around the murders of prostitutes by a transsexual serial killer, who carves a winking elephant on their bodies, and the legacies from the past that bring the main characters to the hunt for the murderer. The hefty narrative gives Irving plenty of room to speculate on outcasts of all kinds, the volatility of sexual identity, the false lure of organized religion, the insidious evil of class distinctions, the chasm between appearance and reality. For those looking for his trademark leitmotifs, Irving provides two: falling into the net and allowed to use the lift . He titillates by equipping a character with a giant dildo. He includes a strange homage to novelist James Salter. His attempt to provoke readers into empathy for humanity's lost souls is admirable, but his novel does not engage the reader until the last hundred pages, and that may not be soon enough to satisfy those yearning for a seductive story. (Sept.)
Daruwalla is another iconic Irving figure... Irving handles this
incarnadine combination of farce and horror with high speed skill,
creating a compulsively readable book * Guardian *
[Irving] is at the peak of his powers... he plunges the reader into
one sensual or grotesque scene after another with cheerful vigour
and a madcap tenderness for life... entertainment on a grand scale
* Economist *
More plot twists than the Ramayana and a cast of characters that
includes dwarves, prostitutes, movie stars, tranvestites and at
least one serial killer * Daily Telegraph *
Irving has given us that treat of treats, a wide-ranging fiction of
massive design and length that encapsulates our world with
intelligence and sugars the pill with wit * Mail on Sunday *
Daruwalla's quest for the truth is what sustains this book... a
writer with the courage to follow this difficult journey while also
exploring issues of poverty, racism and disease in a novel so full
of humour is a writer to be treasured * The Times *
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