We’re talking about Bear right now, though, because someone recently posted its cover and some particularly raunchy sections of the book to Imgur under the title, “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, CANADA?” There was even a little boost in e-book sales after the book’s cover-an illustration of a lithe, topless woman with flowing brunette locks being embraced from behind by a bear standing on its hind legs-went viral. The second thing you need to know, however, is that this is not some fringe underground chapbook: it won the Governor General’s award-the highest Canadian honour for the literary arts-in a year in which the jury included Mordecai Richler, Margaret Laurence, and Alice Munro. There’s more to it than that, but why bury the lead? Not a metaphorical, figurative, concept-within-a-creature bear: a real, furry, wild brown bear. The first thing you need to know about Marian Engel’s 1976 novel Bear is that it is about a woman who has sex with a giant bear. To celebrate Bear, we asked five illustrators to reimagine the novel's startling 1976 cover.
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