The Tiger's Wife

Obreht, Tea

3.42

99,511 ratings by Goodreads

ISBN 10: 0307877000 ISBN 13: 9780307877000

Publisher: Random House, 2011

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST � NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Wall Street Journal � O: The Oprah Magazine � The Economist � Vogue �Slate � Chicago Tribune � The Seattle Times � Dayton Daily News � Publishers Weekly �Alan Cheuse, NPR’s All Things Considered

SELECTED ONE OF THE TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times � Entertainment Weekly � The Christian Science Monitor � The Kansas City Star � Library Journal

Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, T�a Obreht, the youngest ofThe New Yorker’s twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will establish her as one of the most vibrant, original authors of her generation.

In a Balkan country mending from years of conflict, Natalia, a young doctor, arrives on a mission of mercy at an orphanage by the sea. By the time she and her lifelong friend Z�ra begin to inoculate the children there, she feels age-old superstitions and secrets gathering everywhere around her. Secrets her outwardly cheerful hosts have chosen not to tell her. Secrets involving the strange family digging for something in the surrounding vineyards. Secrets hidden in the landscape itself.

But Natalia is also confronting a private, hurtful mystery of her own: the inexplicable circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. After telling her grandmother that he was on his way to meet Natalia, he instead set off for a ramshackle settlement none of their family had ever heard of and died there alone. A famed physician, her grandfather must have known that he was too ill to travel. Why he left home becomes a riddle Natalia is compelled to unravel.

Grief struck and searching for clues to her grandfather’s final state of mind, she turns to the stories he told her when she was a child. On their weeklytrips to the zoo he would read to her from a worn copy of Rudyard Kipling’sThe Jungle Book, which he carried with him everywhere; later, he told her stories of his own encounters over many years with “the deathless man,” a vagabond who claimed to be immortal and appeared never to age. But the most extraordinary story of all is the one her grandfather never told her, the one Natalia must discover for herself. One winter during the Second World War, his childhood village was snowbound, cut off even from the encroaching German invaders but haunted by another, fierce presence: a tiger who comes ever closer under cover of darkness. “These stories,” Natalia comes to understand, “run like secret rivers through all the other stories” of her grandfather’s life. And it is ultimately within these rich, luminous narratives that she will find the answer she is looking for.

From the Hardcover edition.

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Review:

Advance praise for "The Tiger's Wife"
"[A] brilliant debut...[Tea] Obreht is an expert at depicting history through aftermath, people through the love they inspire, and place through the stories that endure; the reflected world she creates is both immediately recognizable and a legend in its own right. Obreht is talented far beyond her years, and her unsentimental faith in language, dream, and memory is a pleasure."
- "Publishers Weekly", starred review

"Not even Obreht's place on "The New Yorker"'s current "20 Under 40" list of exceptional writers will prepare readers for the transporting richness and surprise of this gripping novel of legends and loss...[Contains] moments of breathtaking magic, wildness and beauty...Every word, every scene, every thought is blazingly alive in this many-faceted, spellbinding, and rending novel of death, succor, and rememb

Advance praise for "The Tiger's Wife"
"[A] brilliant debut...[Tea] Obreht is an expert at depicting history through aftermath, people through the love they inspire, and place through the stories that endure; the reflected world she creates is both immediately recognizable and a legend in its own right. Obreht is talented far beyond her years, and her unsentimental faith in language, dream, and memory is a pleasure."
- "Publishers Weekly," starred review

"Not even Obreht's place on "The New Yorker"'s current "20 Under 40" list of exceptional writers will prepare readers for the transporting richness and surprise of this gripping novel of legends and loss...[Contains] moments of breathtaking magic, wildness and beauty...Every word, every scene, every thought is blazingly alive in this many-faceted, spellbinding, and rending novel of death, succor, and remembrance." - "Booklist," starred review

"Dizzyingly nuanced yet crisp, [and] muscularly written

"Stunning . . . a richly textured and searing novel."--Michiko Kakutani, "The New York Times"
"Spectacular . . . [Tea Obreht] spins a tale of such marvel and magic in a literary voice so enchanting that the mesmerized reader wants her never to stop. [Grade: ] A"--"Entertainment Weekly"
"[Obreht] has a talent for subtle plotting that eludes most writers twice her age, and her descriptive powers suggest a kind of channeled genius. . . . No novel [this year] has been more satisfying."--"The Wall Street Journal"
"Filled with astonishing immediacy and presence, fleshed out with detail that seems firsthand, "The Tiger's Wife "is all the more remarkable for being the product not of observation but of imagination."--"The New York Times Book Review"
"That "The Tiger's Wife" never slips entirely into magical realism is part of its magic. . . . Its graceful commingling of contemporary realism and village legend seems even more absorbing."--"The Washington Post"

Book Description:

'T�a Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years' Colum McCann (and she's only 26!)

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