Avenue of Mysteries

John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was twenty-six. He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, and coached wrestling until he was forty-seven. Mr Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times - winning once, in 1980, for his novel The World According to Garp. He received an O Henry Award in 1981 for his short story 'Interior Space'. In 2000, Mr Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for his novel In One Person. An international writer - his novels have been translated into more than thirty-five languages - John Irving lives in Toronto. His all-time best-selling novel, in every language, is A Prayer for Owen Meany. Avenue of Mysteries is his fourteenth novel.