Literary Fiction · ThoughtfulA young doctor recalls her grandfather's stories of a tiger that befriends a deaf-mute girl
The Tiger's Wife
by Téa Obreht
A young doctor pieces together her grandfather's stories of a tiger and a man who cannot die
The narrator is a young woman doctor in an unnamed country in the Balkans, and the story spans the middle of the twentieth century to the early twenty-first. She narrates her relationship with her grandfather, also a doctor. He tells stories from his childhood village, including one about a deaf-mute girl who befriends a tiger that escaped from a nearby zoo, and others about a man who cannot die. It is Obreht's debut, and at 25 she became the youngest winner of the Orange Prize.
More about this book
Who
A young woman doctor and her grandfather, also a doctor.
World
An unnamed country in the Balkans, from the mid-twentieth century to the early twenty-first.
What makes it different
Folk stories are nested inside the narrator's own story. It is a debut novel.
Feel
Haunting and folkloric. It was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Further reading
- The Tiger's WifeWikipedia