The Fourth Hand

(Paperback)

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Description

A masterpiece from one of the great contemporary American writers. 'Imagine a young man on his way to a less-than-thirty-second event - the loss of his left hand, long before he reached middle age.' While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; millions of TV viewers witness the accident. In Boston, a renowned hand surgeon awaits the opportunity to perform the nation's first hand transplant. A married woman in Wisconsin wants to give the one-handed reporter her husband's left hand, that is, after her husband dies. But the husband is alive, relatively young, and healthy...

Reviews

A rich and deeply moving tale... Vintage Irving * Washington Post *
A beguiling tale of love and redemption * Time Out *
Peerless... Writing without a wasted second * Guardian *
Articulate, clever, quirky, more than a touch profound and very funny * Mirror *
Sharp and very, very funny, this is another of Irving's fiercely original meditations of life's inherent strangeness * Uncut *

Author Bio

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.