About the Book

“A remarkable novel. . . . A Prayer for Owen Meany is a rare creation. ... An amazingly brave piece of work ... so extraordinary, so original, and so enriching. . . . Readers will come to the end feeling sorry to leave [this] richly textured and carefully wrought world.” —STEPHEN KING, Washington Post

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys—best friends—are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary.

A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick

Critical Praise

“A remarkable novel. . . . A Prayer for Owen Meany is a rare creation in the somehow exhausted world of late twentieth-century fiction—it is an amazingly brave piece of work . . . so extraordinary, so original, and so enriching. . . . Readers will come to the end feeling sorry to leave [this] richly textured and carefully wrought world.” — STEPHEN KING, Washington Post

“The magic of A Prayer for Owen Meany is that it forces us into a confrontation with our own carapaces of skepticism . . . It is a brave and subtly disturbing affirmation of faith, and it is all the more remarkable for its engagement with the deepest questions, the most painful mysteries of our lives.” — Los Angeles Times

"Among the very best American novels of our time." — Charlotte Observer

"[A] great novel." — Dallas Morning News

"A work of genius." — Independent (London)

"A heartbreaking masterpiece of a novel." — Sunday Express (London)

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Product Details

• ISBN: 9780062284853
• ISBN 10: 0062284851
• Imprint: Mariner Books Classics
• On Sale: 04/22/2014
• Trimsize: 5.500 in (w) x 8.250 in (h) x 1.640 in (d)
• Pages: 656
• List Price: $18.99
• BISAC1 : FICTION / Classics
• BISAC2 : FICTION / Literary
• BISAC3 : FICTION / Christian / General