Many of Irving's novels, including The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), The Cider House Rules (1985), A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), and A Widow for One Year (1998), have been bestsellers.

[2] Five of his novels have been adapted into films (Garp, Hotel New Hampshire, Owen Meany, Cider House, and Widow for One Year).

While a student at Exeter, Irving was taught by author and Christian theologian Frederick Buechner, whom he quoted in an epigraph in A Prayer for Owen Meany.

[6][7] Irving never met his biological father, who was a pilot in the Army Air Forces during World War II.

Like Garp, the novel was quickly made into a film, this time directed by Tony Richardson and starring Jodie Foster, Rob Lowe, and Beau Bridges.

The novel was influenced by The Tin Drum (1959) by Günter Grass,[17] and the plot contains further allusions to The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne and the works of Dickens.

Arguably his most complicated and difficult book, and a departure from the themes and settings of his previous novels, it received ambivalent reviews by American critics[19] but became a national and international bestseller on the strength of Irving's reputation for fashioning literate, engrossing page-turners.

[19] In 1999, after nearly 10 years in development, Irving's screenplay for The Cider House Rules was made into a film directed by Lasse Hallström, starring Michael Caine, Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, and Delroy Lindo.

[20] Irving wrote My Movie Business, a memoir about his involvement in creating the film version of The Cider House Rules.

Wolfe appeared on Hot Type later in 1999, calling Irving, Norman Mailer, and John Updike his "three stooges" who were panicked by his newest novel, A Man in Full (1998).

Before the publication of Garp made him independently wealthy, Irving sporadically accepted short-term teaching positions (including one at his alma mater, the Iowa Writers' Workshop).

[22][23] In addition to his novels, he has also published Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (1996), a collection of his writings including a brief memoir and unpublished short fiction, My Movie Business, an account of the protracted process of bringing The Cider House Rules to the big screen, and The Imaginary Girlfriend, a short memoir focusing on writing and wrestling.

In 2002, his four most highly regarded novels, The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for One Year, were published in Modern Library editions.

[26][27][28] In a New York Magazine interview in 2009, Irving stated that he had begun work on a new novel, his 13th, based in part on a speech from Shakespeare's Richard II.

The novel shares a similar theme and concern with The World According to Garp, the latter being in part about "people who hate you for your sexual differences," said Irving.

[35] According to the byline of a self-penned, February 20, 2017, essay for The Hollywood Reporter, Irving had completed his teleplay for the five-part series based on The World According to Garp and was working on his fifteenth novel.

In an interview with Mike Kilen for The Des Moines Register, published on October 26, 2017, Irving revealed that the title of his novel-in-progress was "Darkness As a Bride.

Irving received the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award at the annual Dayton Literary Peace Prize gala on October 28, 2018.

[38] In 1964, Irving married Shyla Leary,[40] whom he had met at Harvard in 1963 while taking a summer course in German, before traveling to Vienna with IES Abroad.

[43] Irving is a second cousin of academic Amy Bishop, who was convicted of perpetrating the 2010 University of Alabama in Huntsville shooting.