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NEA Big Read

2023-2024 The Bear

The Bear, National Book Award finalist Andrew Krivak’s third novel, is a “beautiful and elegant … gem” (Publishers Weekly) that explores a world at the end of humanity. The last two humans on Earth—a father and daughter—live off the land at the foot of a mountain, learning to live alongside the rhythms of a world reclaimed by nature. Then one day, the girl is alone: left only with the lessons her father taught her and the companionship of the vast wilderness. "Krivak folds the deep past and the far future into a remarkable fable about our inheritance as humanity makes a harmonic return to the spirit and animal worlds," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Adam Johnson. Krivak’s descriptions are “so loving and vivid that you can feel the lake water and smell the sea” (Slate). “This tender story is endowed with such fullness of meaning that you have to assign this short, touching book its own category: the post-apocalypse utopia” (Wall Street Journal).

2023-2024 - The Bear

The Bear - Reading Group Questions