The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear
The 131⁄2 Lives of Captain Bluebear follow the adventures of the character Bluebear in the first half of his 27 lives (the joke being that a bluebear lives three times as long as a cat). The novel intersperses Bluebear’s narrative with excerpts from The Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs by Professor Abdullah Nightingale, who bacterially transmits it into Bluebear’s brain.
The plot is set in the fictional continent of Zamonia (location of several other novels by Walter Moers) on Earth before the “great descent” in which Zamonia and many other continents sink beneath the waves. Many of the creatures encountered by Bluebear in the novel are taken from myths, folktales, prehistory, and Moers’ imagination, among them Gryphons, Maenads, Trolls, Yetis, and Pterodactyls. Nearing the end of the novel, the mythical city of Atlantis disappears from Earth, an event witnessed by Bluebear.
The book “Die 131/2 Leben des Käpt´n Blaubär” was originally published in 1999 and then in 2002 relased as an audio book with the voice of Dirk Bach.
This trailer is a short example of the new audio book (originally 19 hours long), having the superb voice and acting of Dirk Bach and new Music and Sound Design by Michał Krajczok.