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In One Person
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  • Published: 3 June 2013
  • ISBN: 9780552778442
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 624
  • RRP: $32.99

In One Person

Formats & editions
EBook
10 May 2012
Audiobook
10 May 2012
Paperback
3 June 2013
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Spanning fifty years, In One Person is an breathtaking examination of sexual identity

A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love — tormented, funny, and affecting — and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a ‘sexual suspect’, a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 — in his landmark novel of ‘terminal cases’, The World According to Garp.

His most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving’s In One Person is a poignant tribute to Billy’s friends and lovers — a theatrical cast of characters who defy category and convention. Not least, In One Person is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself ‘worthwhile’.
  • Published: 3 June 2013
  • ISBN: 9780552778442
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 624
  • RRP: $32.99
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About the author

John Irving

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. For more information about the author, please visit www.john-irving.com
portrait photo of John Irving

Also by John Irving

Avenue of Mysteries
Last Night in Twisted River
Until I Find You
The Fourth Hand
A Widow For One Year
Setting Free The Bears
The Water-Method Man
See all

Praise for In One Person

This tender exploration of nascent desire, of love and loss, manages to be sweeping, brilliant, political, provocative, tragic and funny - it is precisely the kind of astonishing alchemy we associate with a John Irving novel. A profound truth is arrived at in these pages. It is Irving at his most daring, at his most ambitious. It is America and American writing, both at their very best

Abraham Verghese

In One Person is a novel that makes you proud to be human. It is a book that not only accepts but also loves our differences. From the beginning of his career Irving has always cherished our peculiarities - in a fierce, not a saccharine way. Now he has extended his sympathies - and ours - still further into areas that even the misfits eschew. John Irving in this magnificent novel - his best and most passionate since The World According to Garp - has sacralized what lies between polarizing genders and orientations. And have I mentioned it is also a gripping page-turner and a beautifully constructed work of art?

Edmund White

This wonderful novel is an epic, moving survey of 70 years of sexual revolution

The Times

A rich and absorbing book, even beautiful

Esquire

A brave and hugely affecting depiction of how in one life (sexual and otherwise) we contain multitudes

Elle

In One Person gives a lot. It’s funny, as you would expect. It’s risky in what it exposes. Tolerance, in a John Irving novel is not about anything goes; it’s what happens when we face our own desires honestly, whether we act on them or not

Jeanette Winterson

Deeply enjoyable... a comic celebration of polymorphous perversity, and of literature

Guardian

Told with Irving's typically Dickensian scope and humanity, In One Person is a celebration of difference

The Word

Superbly conceived

Metro

Boldly conceived and energetically executed

Spectator

Irving has rarely written with the gorgeous poise and control he musters here

Financial Times

Crammed with Irving's signature cleverness

The Scotsman

Irving writes with clarity and compassion about the Aids epidemic: his forensic detailing of this merciless disease is deeply affecting

Irish Times