Queen Esther cover art

Queen Esther

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Queen Esther

By: John Irving
Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £15.79

Buy Now for £15.79

About this listen

 After forty years, John Irving returns to the world of his bestselling classic novel and Academy Award-winning The Cider House Rules, revisiting the orphanage in St. Cloud’s, Maine, where Dr Wilbur Larch takes in Esther, a Viennese-born Jew whose life is shaped by anti-Semitism.

Esther Nacht is born in Vienna in 1905. Her father dies on board a ship from Bremerhaven to Portland, Maine, and anti-Semites murder her mother in Portland. In the orphanage at St. Cloud’s, it’s clear to Dr Larch, the physician and director of the orphanage, that the abandoned child not only knows she’s Jewish, but she’s familiar with the biblical Queen Esther she was named for. Dr Larch knows it won’t be easy to find a Jewish family to adopt Esther; he doubts he’ll find any family to adopt her.

When Esther is fourteen, soon to become a ward of the state, Dr. Larch meets the Winslows, a philanthropic family with a history of providing for unadopted orphans. The Winslows aren’t Jewish, but they detest anti-Semitism and similar prejudice. Esther’s gratitude to the Winslows is unending. As she retraces her steps to her birth city, Esther keeps loving and protecting the Winslows – even in Vienna.

The final chapter of this historical novel is set in Jerusalem in 1981, when Esther is seventy-six. Jewish World Literature Middle East Royalty Portland
All stars
Most relevant
loved this book but it left me wanting more of the story when it ended. Irving's motifs follow his previous novels and the link to a previous novels is a great idea.

brilliant as ever

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It started so well .. mentioning things from early works, I could imagine the way the story might go and I was excited to get into it.
Sadly it became bizarre.. and carried on being bizarre.
Very disappointed

Wishing to be listening to his early work instead of this

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.