The Fourth Hand

Irving, John

ISBN 10: 0375431217 / ISBN 13: 9780375431210

Published by Random House, NY, 2001

About this Item

SIGNED First Edition. Hard cover in dust jacket. LARGE PRINT EDITION. Published NY: Random House, 2001. First printing of the First Large Print edition. Signed by Author on the half title. Minor bumping to bottom rear corner, bookplate removal abrasion on front free end paper, otherwise near fine, clean, tight copy in dust jacket. Rare to find signed late Irving works - especially Large Print copies.

Seller Inventory # 001121

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Fourth Hand
• Publisher: Random House, NY
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375431217
• ISBN 13: 9780375431210
• Binding: Hard
• Edition: 1st
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literary & Modern First Editions
  • Signed

About this title

Synopsis

The Fourth Hand asks an interesting question: “How can anyone identify a dream of the future?” The answer: “Destiny is not imaginable, except in dreams or to those in love.”

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; meanwhile, in the distracting aftermath of an acrimonious divorce, the surgeon is seduced by his housekeeper. 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.

This is how John Irving’s tenth novel begins; it seems, at first, to be a comedy, perhaps a satire, almost certainly a sexual farce. Yet, in the end, The Fourth Hand is as realistic and emotionally moving as any of Mr. Irving’s previous novels – including The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for One Year – or his Oscar-winning screenplay of The Cider House Rules.

The Fourth Hand is characteristic of John Irving’s seamless storytelling and further explores some of the author’s recurring themes – loss, grief, love as redemption. But this novel also breaks new ground; it offers a penetrating look at the power of second chances and the will to

About the Author

John Irving published his first novel at the age of twenty-six. He has received awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation; he has won an O. Henry Award, a National Book Award, and an Oscar. In 1992, Mr. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In January 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.