Queen Esther by John Irving to be Published by Simon & Schuster in November
NEW YORK, February 6, 2025—Simon & Schuster announced today that it will publish a new novel by award-winning and bestselling author John Irving, titled QUEEN ESTHER. Since the publication of his first novel in 1968, John Irving has written some of the most acclaimed books of our time—among them, The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany. Now, 40 years after the publication of The Cider House Rules, John Irving revisits the orphanage in St. Cloud’s, Maine—the setting of his bestselling novel and Academy Award-winning film. For readers or moviegoers familiar with the story, a beloved character reappears in QUEEN ESTHER. Dr. Wilbur Larch is younger than you remember him, and the unadopted orphans at St. Cloud’s are a different cast of characters—Esther Nacht, a Viennese-born Jew, among them. The story begins when Esther, not yet four, is abandoned one winter night. At age 14, she is taken in by a philanthropic New England family, becoming both a mystery and a guardian angel to them. The novel publishes on November 4, 2025.
QUEEN ESTHER is Irving’s 16th novel. Esther is born in Vienna in 1905. Anti-Semitism shapes her life, not only in Austria. Esther’s story is fated to intersect with Israel’s history. In the final chapter, set in Jerusalem in 1981, Esther is 76. This story displays all the hallmarks of a great Irving novel; it has an emotional power that speaks to our times and challenges our thinking.
“The novel always ended in Jerusalem in 1981. You can’t revise or rewrite history. The construction of this novel long predates the events of Oct. 7, and everything that’s happened in Israel since those terrorist attacks and the hostage-taking. With hindsight, it’s easy to say that what I saw and heard in Israel in the early 1980s serves as a precursor to what has developed since that time, but this is what historical fiction is for,” said John Irving.
Said his editor, Simon & Schuster President and Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Karp: “One of the deepest pleasures of reading John Irving comes from discovering the turns in his story along with his characters, so I will give away no plot details, other than to say this: In QUEEN ESTHER, John Irving literally takes readers where he’s never taken them before. The fact that John is still breaking new artistic ground in his 80s, and doing so with such audacious and impeccably crafted storytelling, is yet another reason why he is one of the world’s greatest writers.”
Karp acquired audio, first serial, United States and open market rights from Janet Turnbull, The Turnbull Agency.
John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was 26. He competed as a wrestler for 20 years, and coached wrestling until he was 47. He is a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 1980, Mr. Irving won a National Book Award for his novel The World According to Garp. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for his novel In One Person. Internationally renowned, his novels have been translated into almost 40 languages. His all-time bestselling novel, in every language, is A Prayer for Owen Meany. A dual citizen of the United States and Canada, John Irving lives in Toronto.
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