Bear Comes Home

The hero of this sensational first novel is an alto-sax virtuoso trying to evolve a personal style out of Coltrane and Rollins. He also happens to be a walking, talking, Blake- and Shakespeare-quoting bear whose musical, spiritual, and romantic adventures add up to perhaps the best novel, ursine or human, ever written about jazz. "Poignant and touching moments combine with hilarious descriptions of the bear's struggle in a story that anyone -- whether familiar with jazz or not -- will find compelling and entertaining."--David Amram, "Zabor's knack for detail makes the absurd premise believable . . . and neatly turns the weighty subject -- the painful and ungainly growth of an artist -- into a comic gem."--  "In fluent, witty prose Zabor conveys with remarkable vividness the texture of group improvisation. . . . It swings."--A. O. Scott, "Sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you. Get the Bear."--David Nicholson,   "Zabor . . . conveys the mingled joy and terror of musical improvisation. He also displays a mean wit."-- One of the 's 100 best books of 1997 Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

In this "hilarious, richly imagined bear's eye view of love, music, alienation, manhood and humanity" ("Publishers Weekly"), "Zabor's knack for detail makes the absurd premise (a walking, talking, Blake- and Shakespeare-quoting bear) believable" ("The New Yorker").

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: "A hilarious, richly imagined bear's eye view of love, music, alienation, manhood and humanity . . . that recalls Pynchon at his most controlled."--

Rafi Zabor is a writer and occasional jazz drummer who lives in Brooklyn, New York. The Bear Comes Home is his first novel.