Author John Irving’s career is a spectacular one, with a long list of literary prizes and best-selling novels, including The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules, for which he won an Academy Award for the film adaptation’s screenplay. In November, at 83, he is publishing his latest novel, Queen Esther, which sensitively reflects on Jewish history, identity and antisemitism.

His protagonist, the orphaned Esther Nacht, born in Vienna in 1905, is eventually taken in by the Winslows, a generous and loyal family in New England, where Irving grew up and where many of his novels are set. Despite not being Jewish, the Winslows respect Esther’s commitment to her roots. Like her namesake, this Esther is heroic, traveling as a young woman to Mandatory Palestine, where she plays an important backstage role in the building of the state.

Irving spoke to Hadassah Magazine from his office in downtown Toronto, where he is working on yet another novel. Before the conversation began in earnest, the author, who is not Jewish, said with a laugh, “I gave a moment’s thought to the title, and I was tempted by ‘Hadassah,’ her original Hebrew name.” This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

What inspired Queen Esther?

For someone who is an ending-driven novelist as I always have been, it began where it ended: April 1981 in Jerusalem.

My first European publishers were European Jews with longstanding ties to Israel. When I first went to Israel in 1981 at the invitation of the Jerusalem Book Fair and my Israeli publishers, these European publishers, one Swedish and the other French, came with me. It was inspiring to be there. I took notes, I was learning. What I saw and heard, what was said to me and what I overheard, gave me a very firm but fearful apprehension of what might come next for Israel. You don’t have that many experiences like that, that are so formative. It kept reverberating. I knew I had to come back.

You returned to Israel in July 2024 and told a Jerusalem audience, “I’m pro-Israel, I’m pro-Jewish and I’m for you. That may not necessarily mean that I’m in favor of your current leader.”

No reason to change that. That’s what I said.

How did you dream up the character of Esther Nacht?

I wanted my Esther to be the embodiment of the biblical Esther I imagined. In the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, Esther is someone who hides herself well until it’s time to come out. I wanted my Esther to be that kind of abiding but secret presence. I wanted her to be the puppeteer, managing things when not even on the page. If anyone has a reason to be Esther, it’s this child whose life has been shaped by antisemitism.

In the novel, there’s much discussion of antisemitism. Is that something you have witnessed?

I competed as a wrestler for 20 years and coached until I was 46. You are closer to your teammates than to anyone else. At Exeter, I heard stories from Jewish friends of things that had happened to them and about the experience of being Jewish. And when I studied in Vienna in the 1960s, my Jewish roommate opened my eyes to antisemitism. It would have otherwise gone over my head.

How is your own experience as a college student in Vienna echoed in the novel?

In the book, Jimmy Winslow, a Winslow grandson, has an intrinsic foreignness. He doesn’t quite belong anywhere, including where he comes from. I have that feeling. Most fiction writers, who live mostly in their imaginations, do. I felt like a foreigner when I was in New England. When I was a student abroad and was an actual foreigner, I had the feeling that I was finally in a place where I belong.

You lend your middle name, Winslow, to the family that takes in Esther. Is their generosity characteristic of your own family?

I certainly had a good one. It was intentional to use the name Winslow, my mother’s maiden name.

It’s a strange coincidence that two very important characters in my life, who have been early readers of my books—my Jewish roommate in Vienna and my stepfather, who was an early hero of mine (all the stepfathers in my books are heroes)—didn’t live to read this book. These two were very much on my mind as I was putting the finishing touches on this book.

What has it been like for you to watch recent events unfolding in Israel?

I feel it’s too soon to talk about what comes next. I don’t do the future. I write about the past.

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Sandee Brawarsky is an award-winning journalist, editor and author of several books, most recently 212 Views of Central Park: Experiencing New York City’s Jewel From Every Angle.