Quotes from work
The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

Walter Moers Original title Die 13½ Leben des Käpt’n Blaubär (German, 1999)

The 131⁄2 Lives of Captain Bluebear is a 1999 fantasy novel by German writer and cartoonist Walter Moers which details the numerous lives of a human-sized bear with blue fur. The captain's name is originally a pun in German, based upon the fact that the German words for "bears" and "berries" sound very much alike, whereas Blaubeere is actually the German word for bilberry , that a typical sailorish sailor is called an seabear, and that sailors are prejudiced to be quite often blue, i.e. drunk. The novel was originally written in German, an English translation was published in the United Kingdom in 2000 and in the United States in 2005, an Italian translation in 2000, a Chinese translation in 2002, and a French translation in 2005. The novel attained considerable popularity in Germany and the United Kingdom while experiencing relative obscurity in the United States.

“A bluebear has twenty-seven lives. I shall recount thirteen-and-a-half of them in this book but keep quiet about the rest. A bear must have his secrets, after all; they make him seem attractive and mysterious.”

Walter Moers The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

Source: The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear