Setting Free the Bears

“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