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The Fourth Hand asks a fascinating question: "How do anyone identify a imagine the near future?" The answer: "Destiny is not imaginable, except in dreams or even to those in love."

While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; an incredible number of TV viewers witness the accident. In Boston, a renowned hand surgeon awaits the possibility to perform the nation's first hand transplant; meanwhile, in the distracting aftermath of the acrimonious divorce, the surgeon is seduced by his housekeeper. A married woman in Wisconsin wants to provide the one-handed reporter her husband's left hand-that is, after her husband dies. But the husband is alive, relatively young, and healthy.

This is how John Irving's tenth novel begins; it seems, at first, to be always a comedy, perhaps a satire, probably a sexual farce. Yet, in the end, The Fourth Hand is really as realistic and emotionally moving as any of Mr. Irving's previous novels-including The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for just one Year-or his Oscar-winning screenplay of The Cider House Rules.

The Fourth Hand is characteristic of John Irving's seamless storytelling and additional explores some of the author's recurring themes-loss, grief, love as redemption. But this novel also breaks new ground; it includes a penetrating look at the power of second chances and the will to change.