The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht, Orion, $29.99.
There are two tigers in this book. One is a semi-mythical creature that lives in the jungles surrounding the old Balkan village of Galina, an object of superstition, fear and dangerous gossip.
It features in many of the stories told to a young doctor, Natalia, by her grandfather — along with folk tales involving a deathless man and a prized copy of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.
The second tiger is real, slinking through the streets of a modern city very like Belgrade after a bomb blows up the zoo and sets free its starving animals — much as actually happened during the civil war and bloodshed accompanying the collapse of the country which was once Yugoslavia.
Téa Obreht interweaves these two stories, set decades apart, to create a powerful and wildly imaginative picture of people caught up in tribal feuds, both old and new.
The complexities of Balkan history have never made greater sense than through this mesh of fable and allegory. The fact the author is just 25, and this her first novel, simply add to the mystery of a marvellous tale.
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