Setting Free the Bears is the first novel by American author John Irving, published in 1968 by Random House.

The original manuscript for the book was submitted as his Master's thesis at the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop in 1967, and was later expanded and revised to its published version.

[3] The book's central plot concerns a plan to liberate all the animals from the Vienna Zoo as happened just after the conclusion of World War II.

Irving's two protagonists—Graff, a young Austrian college student, and Siggy, an eccentric motorcycle mechanic-cum-philosopher—meet and embark on an adventure-filled motorcycle tour of Austria before the novel's climax: "the great zoo bust".

Toward the middle of the book, the two protagonists go their separate ways, and a large section of the novel is given over to "The Notebook"—a chronicle of the Siggy character's family from pre-World War II through the occupation of the Soviets to the late 1960s.