The Tiger's Wife in Around the World

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Dec 18, 2022 Rachel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: around-the-world-challenge-2022, dual-timeline, recent-faves, folklore, 52-book-club-2022, europe, beautifully-written, magical-realism, war-and-conflict, around-the-world

“We're all entitled to our superstitions.”

The Tiger’s Wife is the prize-winning debut novel by Téa Obreht, an author born in the former Yugoslavia. The book is set in an unnamed Balkan country, thought to be Serbia, and won her the Orange Prize for Fiction and nomination for many other awards. It is a dual timeline historical fiction with strong elements of magic realism and folktales.

Natalia Stefanovic lives in “The City” (probably Belgrade in Serbia, which was bombed in 1999). She has taken a “We're all entitled to our superstitions.”

The Tiger’s Wife is the prize-winning debut novel by Téa Obreht, an author born in the former Yugoslavia. The book is set in an unnamed Balkan country, thought to be Serbia, and won her the Orange Prize for Fiction and nomination for many other awards. It is a dual timeline historical fiction with strong elements of magic realism and folktales.

Natalia Stefanovic lives in “The City” (probably Belgrade in Serbia, which was bombed in 1999). She has taken a trip to a clinic across the border, presumably in Croatia, with fellow-doctor Zoe to undertake immunisation of children in the area. While she is there she learns of her grandfather’s death, which inexplicably occurred in a small obscure coastal town called Zdrevkov, which no-one knew he was visiting, far from his home. Natalia tries to piece together her grandfather’s story and shed light on why he was in Zdrevkov. The book shifts between this search, and stories of her grandfather’s life. In particular it revolves around two folktales that interweave with her grandfather’s story.
“Everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories…the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life — of my grandfather’s days in the army; his great love for my grandmother; the years he spent as a surgeon and a tyrant of the University.”

The first story is about the “deathless man,” Gavran Gailé, who can foresee people’s deaths but is unable to die himself. The second story, the Tiger’s Wife, involves a tiger which escaped from the zoo during WWII and sheltered around her grandfather’s childhood village Galina. The tiger forms a close bond with the deaf-mute, battered wife of the butcher, and triggers the villagers’ fears, anxiety and entrenched superstitions.

The book does not clearly outline the historical events, but makes references to WWII, its aftermath, and also the subsequent wars tearing the region into pieces. It makes references to the hardships her grandfather faces as a physician, being suspected of “loyalist feelings toward the unified state” and thus being suspended from practicing medicine, but continuing in secret. It deals with the trauma of the division of Yugoslavia. “Once separate, the pieces that made up our old country no longer carried the same characteristics that had formerly represented their respective parts of the whole.”

I found this to be an intriguing and beautifully written book. The descriptions of the aftermath of the war and the superstitious beliefs and actions of the villagers were insightful and vivid. It seemed to lose momentum however in the later parts of the book. I would definitely be keen to read another book by this author.

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Dec 08, 2016 Amy Youngberg marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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