"Thanks to wrestling I got to know the intimacy of many guys"

BarcelonaJohn Irving (New Hampshire, 1942) has been a writer much loved by Catalan readers for decades. Although he has just turned 84, he has no intention of retiring: Reina Esther (Edicions 62/Tusquets; Catalan translation by Ernest Riera) has just arrived in bookstores, a novel that revisits one of the most emblematic settings of his fiction, the St. Cloud's orphanage where The Cider House Rules (1985) took place. It is there, at the beginning of the 20th century, that a surly girl of Jewish origin, Esther Nacht, arrives. Readers will accompany her on her long life journey, which begins in Vienna, continues in the American state of Maine and, after passing through Europe again, ends in Israel in the early eighties.

"The first time I visited Israel was in 1981," recalls the author from his home in Toronto, in a spacious study filled with family photographs and a stationary bicycle he still tries to use every day. "At that time, I felt sorry for the Zionist Jews who created the state of Israel. The Israelis in the publishing industry I knew were left-wing and non-practicing, and they already had a critical view of the settlements in Gaza and the West Bank," he says. The last time he returned, to check some details about the novel he was finishing, was in 2024. "The conflict I point to at the end of Reina Esther had been confirmed as a sad reality – he continues –. I was ashamed to be able to visit all the places I needed so easily because of the war. Hardly any tourists went to Israel then, and practically none go now." In Reina Esther, Irving offers a look at the past to try to understand one of the most complex political and social realities of the 20th century. "Half of my sixteen novels are historical," he admits.

In a time as delicate as the present, Irving proposes "an empathetic look at a Jewish woman". Esther is only three years old when she encounters antisemitism. "What would you have done if you had suffered antisemitism as a child?", asks the author. It won't be until the thirties that, back in Vienna where she was born and from which she had to leave, Esther wonders about her origins. "Esther's childhood was stolen – says the author –. She decides to get involved in the creation of the state of Israel". "Tenacious and fierce" like Queen Esther of the Old Testament, the protagonist of Irving's new novel will come to agree to be a surrogate mother for one of the daughters of the Winslows, the family that adopted her at fourteen, after a stint at St. Cloud's orphanage. "I haven't written any novel yet thinking about the themes that might come out: it seems like a strategy for a creative writing professor – he admits –. I always work from characters who are often not directly related to me, but they draw on my knowledge and experiences".

Abortion and sexual discrimination

Long before the legalization of abortion, one of the battlehorses of The Cider House Rules, Irving learned of it thanks to his mother, "who was a nursing assistant and helped girls and women who had just become pregnant". Something similar happens with discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, which appears in novels such as The World According to Garp (1978), In One Person (2012), and The Last Chairlift (2022). "My twin siblings were discriminated against from a young age because one was gay and the other was a lesbian," he recalls. The writer's stepfather, who was a teacher at the high school Irving attended, helped him understand "the importance of caring for anyone who is not as fortunate as you are," he explains before recalling another star topic of his life and work, wrestling. "I grew up in a small town in New Hampshire where I didn't have the opportunity to make Black or Jewish friends – he says –. That changed in high school and when I started wrestling. I competed for twenty years, and it was during that time that I found my calling to write. Thanks to wrestling, I got to know the intimacy of many boys. Some explained to me how they had been mistreated and abused. All these formative experiences were very important to me, and they have never left me".

Irving has remained true to the idea of "not tolerating intolerance". His Esther Nacht, after suffering antisemitism in the early 20th century, ends up being a staunch defender of Zionism who helped create a just state after the genocide against the Jewish people during World War II. Eight decades later, Israel is very different from that newly created country: shortly after emerging from the bloody war against Gaza, it bombs Lebanon daily, and this past Wednesday launched a hundred attacks that left more than 250 dead and over a thousand injured.