title: In One Person: A Novel
author:  John Irving 
description: "This tender exploration of nascent desire, of love and loss, manages to be sweeping, brilliant, political, provocative, tragic, and funny--it is precisely the kind of astonishing alchemy we associate with a John Irving novel. The unfolding of the AIDS epidemic in the United States in the '80s was the defining moment for me as a physician. With my patients' deaths, almost always occurring in the prime of life, I would find myself cataloging the "other" losses--namely, what these people might have offered society had they lived the full measure of their days: their art, their literature, the children they might have raised. "In One Person" is the novel that for me will define that era. A profound truth is arrived at in these pages. It is Irving at his most daring, at his most ambitious. It is America and American writing, both at their very best."
zlib_text: ![](Images/image00315.jpeg)
  
  “This tender exploration of nascent desire, of love and loss, manages to be
  sweeping, brilliant, political, provocative, tragic, and funny—it is precisely
  the kind of astonishing alchemy we associate with a John Irving novel. The
  unfolding of the AIDS epidemic in the United States in the ’80s was the
  defining moment for me as a physician. With my patients’ deaths, almost always
  occurring in the prime of life, I would find myself cataloging the other
  losses—namely, what these people might have offered society had they lived the
  full measure of their days: their art, their literature, the children they
  might have raised. _In One Person_ is the novel that for me will define that
  era. A profound truth is arrived at in these pages. It is Irving at his most
  daring, at his most ambitious. It is America and American writing, both at
  their very best.”
  
  — ABRAHAM VERGHESE
  
  ![](Images/image00316.jpeg)
  
    
  
  “ _In One Person_ is a novel that makes you proud to be human.