Setting Free the Bears is the first novel by American author John Irving, published in 1968 by Random House.
The book’s central plot concerns a plan to liberate all the animals from the Vienna Zoo as happened just after the conclusion of World War II. Irving’s two protagonists—Graff, a young Austrian college student, and Siggy, an eccentric motorcycle mechanic-cum-philosopher—meet and embark on an adventure-filled motorcycle tour of Austria before the novel’s climax: “the great zoo bust”.
Toward the middle of the book, the two protagonists go their separate ways, and a large section of the novel is given over to “The Notebook”—a chronicle of the Siggy character’s family from pre-World War II through the occupation of the Soviets to the late 1960s. Siggy is killed in a motorcycle accident, and the grief-stricken Graff then continues with their plan to free the inhabitants of the Vienna Zoo with Siggy’s voice echoing in his head. This ends in catastrophic results.
