Born a Parsi in Bombay, sent to university and medical school in Vienna, Dr Farrokh Daruwalla is a Canadian citizen - a 59-year-old orthopaedic surgeon, living in Toronto. Periodically, the doctor returns to India; in Bombay, most of his patients are crippled children.

Once, twenty years ago, Dr Daruwalla was the examining physician of two murder victims in Goa. Now, twenty years later, the doctor will be reacquainted with the murderer.

'Daruwalla's quest for the truth is what sustains this book...a writer with the courage to follow this difficult journey while also exploring issues of poverty, racism and disease in a novel so full of humour is a writer to be treasured.'
Erica Wagner, The Times

'[Irving] is at the peak of his powers...he plunges the reader into one sensual or grotesque scene after another with cheerful vigour and a madcap tenderness for life...entertainment on a grand scale'
Economist

'Daruwalla is another iconic Irving figure...the good man in an inexplicable world...Irving handles this incarnadine combination of farce and horror with high speed skill, creating a compulsively readable book'
Elizabeth Young, Guardian

'Irving's popularity is not hard to understand. His world really is the world according to everyone'
Time

 
I bought a pile of eight John Irving books really, really cheap, mainly because A Prayer For Owen Meany was on the BBC Big Read list and I would need to get a copy at some point. However, when I saw the titles of the books I was a little startled to find I knew most of them...and how is it one man can write so many classic books! I'm really curious now to find out if I like his writing style, and if his famed books can touch me as they have so many others.