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Can I read The Bear Comes Home on EtoBox?

The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor is a work of fiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Bear Comes Home about?

The hero of Rafi Zabor's first novel is an alto saxophone virtuoso trying to evolve a personal style out of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman. He also happens to be a walking, talking, Shakespeare-and Blake-quoting bear whose keen sense of irony protects him from the double loneliness of the artist and animal in an underappreciative metropolis.The scion of a long line of European circus bears (and the product of an amazing roll of the genetic dice), the Bear, when we first meet him, is eking out a living doing a routinely humiliating street dancing art with his friend and keeper, Jones. But what the Bear is really best at -- besides making himself cosmically miserable -- is playing the alto with his world-calls set of chops. One day he makes a bold foray from their apartment to jam with Arthur Blythe and Lester Bowie -- real-life musicians rub elbows with fictional counterparts throughout the novel -- at a New York club, thus beginning a musical and romantic odyssey. A nightclub bust followed by long dark nights of the soul in New York City's dankest jail. Freedom, a recording contract, underground fame, a road tour that is alternately hilarious, scary, ridiculous,

Who reads The Bear Comes Home?

It is typically read by readers looking for immersive, entertainment-first reading.

Common subject areas: fiction, literature, genre fiction.

Author
Rafi Zabor
Publisher
New York : Norton
Published
1997
Language
EN
ISBN
9780393040371
Category
work of fiction
Subjects
Literary Fiction, Romance, Fiction
Rating
3.9 / 5 (403 ratings)
Updated
2026-03-14

Other editions & translations