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13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers

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Captain Bluebear has 27 lives in which to sail the seas and explore the great continent of Zamonia. But as a man-sized bear with bright blue fur who was raised by mini-pirates, absurd adventures await him at every turn. The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear, by German author Walter Moers, brings the listener along on Bluebear's epic adventure/odyssey that mark the first half of his many lives. The storytelling style is often compared to the whimsy of Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide series paired with J.R.R. Tolkein and The Lord of the Rings.

Unlike a lot of other authors for adults, Moers isn't scared to write about imaginative worlds and creatures, and doesn't care if they don't exactly make sense. Because of this, his works bring back the same giddy excitement that I used to get while reading a great book as a child.
—Michele Lefkowitz, GoodReads.com

Bluebear is quite literally a blue bear—abandoned on the sea when he was just a cub—who was found by a group of very small pirates who decide to raise him. When Bluebear grows too big, the pirates leave him to live 13½ lives of adventures full of a vast array of absurd places and characters including, Hobgoblins, talking waves, carnivorous islands, pterodactyls, Professor Abdullah Nightingale (a man with seven brains), a prince from another dimension, men living in a tornado, and even a blue she-bear.

From the Publisher

Unlike cats, which have only nine lives, bluebears have twenty-seven. This is fortunate, because our hero is forever avoiding disaster by a paw's breadth. In this remarkable book, Captain Bluebear tells the story of his first thirteen-and-a-half lives spent on the mysterious continent of Zamonia, where intelligence is an infectious disease and water flows uphill, where headless giants roam deserts made of sugar, and where only Captain Bluebear's courage and ingenuity enable him to escape the dangers that lie in wait for him around every corner. In company with our indomitable hero, we enter a realm of the imagination that combines the fantasy of Lord of the Rings and The Neverending Story with the humour of Baron Munchausen—a wonderland where anything can exist except boredom.

Originally published in German as Die 13½ Leben des Käpt’n Blaubär, Walter Moers weaves a captivating tale that streams through a fantastic adventure with a sense of imagination, originality and pure insanity—the likes of which is rarely experienced. This one-of-a-kind fantasy adventure novel has become a best seller in Europe, originally written in German it was translated into English in 2000 and published in America for the first time in 2005. Captain Bluebear first appeared as a puppet in a German children's TV show, telling ridiculous stories about his pirate adventures. An animated movie was released in 1999 to coincide with Moer's novel, which was later adapted into a musical, with an October 2006 German premier.