The Tiger's Wife

Natalia is a young doctor living and practicing in a Balkan country still reeling from violence and torn apart by recent war. When her grandfather dies mysteriously in a small hospital not far from where Natalia is working, she must revisit some of the stories he told her as a child to make sense of his final journey.

Weaving together historical world events and folklore, Obreht has created a mystical story of magic and old world beliefs. Her characters are original and interesting, seamlessly bridging the two distinctively different aspects of the novel – the realism of Natalia’s world as compared to that of her grandfather, where the boundaries between myth and reality become blurred in the re-telling of his past. Despite coming across as a sober, scientifically minded young woman, Natalia is still under the spell of her grandfather’s stories she has grown up with as a child. About the Indian tiger which escaped from the zoo during World War 1, terrorising a small village and forming a strange friendship with a deaf-mute muslim girl, who became known as “the tiger’s wife”. The tragic events that winter, which have haunted her grandfather all his life, and may explain some of his obsession with tigers and the copy of “The Jungle Book” he carries with him wherever he goes. And there is the mysterious figure of the deathless man, a man punished for cheating death by never being allowed to die – who has had several contacts with her grandfather over the years. Is he somehow connected to her grandfather’s death?

In essence, the book very cleverly captures the atmosphere of a country still haunted by its past, where death is very much a reality and old-world beliefs still prevail, despite the advances of modern technology. Having grown up with my grandparent’s stories, I could relate to the sense of fascination and other-worldliness that Natalia feels about her grandfather’s mysterious past. The black undertone of death and loss which pervades the story also rang true considering the country’s history of violence and war.

All in all, I found the novel utterly charming and captivating, and found myself getting lost in its unusual characters and stories. The book brought back some of the magic of my own childhood, of long winter nights sitting in front of the fire listening to my grandparents tell stories. Which were often terrifying, and always had an element of mystery about them. Well done to this young new author!

I've just at the beginning but very much enjoying it.