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Setting Free the Bears

A Novel

Author John Irving

Paperback

$20.00 US

Ballantine Group | Ballantine Books

5.53"W x 8.24"H x 0.65"D | 9 oz | 24 per carton

On sale Jun 23, 1997 | 304 Pages | 9780345417985

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“Truly remarkable . . . encompasses the longings and agonies of youth . . . a complex and moving novel.”—Time

“Astonishing . . . a writer of uncommon imaginative power. Whatever [John Irving] writes, it will be worth reading.”—Saturday Review

It is 1967. Two Viennese university students, Siggy and Hannes, roam the Austrian countryside on their motorcycles—on a quest: to liberate the bears of the Vienna Zoo. But their good intentions have both comic and gruesome consequences in this first novel from John Irving, already a master storyteller at twenty-five years old.

“Imagine a mixture of Till Eulenspiegel and Ken Kesey . . . and you've got the range of the merry pranksters who hot rod through Mr. Irving's book . . . tossing flowers, stealing salt shakers, and planning the biggest caper of their young lives.”—The New York Times

JOHN IRVING was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was twenty-six. He competed as a wrestler for twenty years and coached wrestling until he was forty-seven. He is a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

In 1980, Mr. Irving won a National Book Award for his novel The World According to Garp. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screeplay for The Cider House Rules.In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for his novel In One Person. Internationally renowned, his novels have been translated into almost forty languages. His all-time bestselling novel, in every language, is A Prayer for Owen Meany.

A dual citizen of the United States and Canada, John Irving lives in Toronto. Queen Esther is his sixteenth novel. View titles by John Irving

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“Truly remarkable . . . encompasses the longings and agonies of youth . . . a complex and moving novel.”—Time

“Astonishing . . . a writer of uncommon imaginative power. Whatever [John Irving] writes, it will be worth reading.”—Saturday Review

“Imagine a mixture of Till Eulenspiegel and Ken Kesey . . . and you've got the range of the merry pranksters who hot rod through Mr. Irving's book . . . tossing flowers, stealing salt shakers, and planning the bigest caper of their young lives.”—The New York Times

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