John Irving

In 1964, he married Shyla Leary and they had two sons - Colin and Brendan. They got divorced in the early 1980s.

He married Janet Turnbull in 1987. The couple have a have a son, Everret.

In 2007, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, for which he had to undergo radical prostatectomy.

John Irving was born to Helen Frances and John Wallace Blunt, Sr. in Exeter, New Hampshire. His father was a pilot in the Army Air Force - his plane was shot down over Burma in 1943.

He was raised by his step-father and his mother and was a part of the Phillips Exeter Wrestling Program, where he was both a student and an athlete. He was later made an assistant coach for wrestling - a sport he pursued for two decades.

At the age of 15, Irving read ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens, which left an indelible impact on him. He enrolled at the University of New Hampshire and then studied at the University of Iowa, where he earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1967.

His first book ‘Setting Free the Bears’ was published in 1968 at a time when he was teaching at the University of Iowa. He continued to teach at the university and briefly worked at Mount Holyoke through the 1970s. At the same time, he wrote two other novels, ‘The Water-Method Man’ and ‘The 178-Pound Marriage’, both of which became extremely popular.

He shot to fame with his fourth novel, ‘The World According to Garp’, which was published in 1978. It hit the best-sellers lists for months and even won him an award in 1980.

‘The World According to Garp’ was eventually adapted into a film starring Glenn Close, Robin Williams and Mary Beth Hurt, which was nominated for the Academy Awards. All this success inspired Irving even more, which led him to author, ‘The Hotel Hampshire’, published in 1981. The same year, he penned a short-story for the first time titled, ‘Interior Space’.

In 1985, he authored one of his greatest works yet, ‘The Cider House Rules’, which is the story of an orphan who yearns to be adopted and a doctor who looks after him and his needs.

He eventually adapted the novel into a film of the same title, which was released in late 1999. The same year, he documented his time as a writer in Hollywood in the first-of-its-kind memoir, ‘My Movie Business’.

‘The World According to Garp’ was published in 1978 and was a finalist for a prestigious book award. The book sold over 1, 20,000 copies in the first week and was even adapted for a movie, starring Robin Williams. The book is considered his major work and openly deals with dark themes related to death, sexuality and gender visibility.

In 1985, he authored ‘The Cider House Rules’, which became a national best-seller and was even adapted into a film of the same title. The movie was nominated for the ‘Academy Award for Best Picture’.