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The Tiger's Wife

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Wikipedia article




'The Tiger's Wife' is the debut novel of Serbian-American writer Ta Obreht. It was published in 2011 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, a British imprint of Orion Books, and by Random House in America. Obreht won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction for 'The Tiger's Wife'. Obreht was the youngest winner of the prize to date, winning at age 25.

Story



'The Tiger's Wife' is set in an unnamed Balkan country, spanning the mid 20th-century to the early 21st century. It features a young doctor's relationship with her grandfather and the stories he tells her. Her grandfather retells stories about the 'deathless man' who meets him several times in different places and who doesn't die, regardless of the danger he faces; and a deaf-mute girl from his childhood village who befriends a tiger that has escaped from a nearby zoo.

Background



The novel was largely written while Obreht was attending Cornell University.Flanagan, Mark. [http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/authorprofiles/p/Tea-Obreht.htm "Tea Obreht"]. 'Contemporary Literature'. About.com. Retrieved 28 March 2011. Portions of the novel were excerpted in 'The New Yorker' in June 2009.Lee, Stephan (4 March 2011). [http://shelf-life.ew.com/2011/03/04/tea-obreht-interview "Ta Obreht, author of 'The Tiger's Wife,' on craft, age, and early success"] (interview). 'Entertainment Weekly'. 4 March 2011. Retrieved 28 March 2011. When Obreht was asked to summarize the story by a university journalist, she replied, "It's a family saga that takes place in a fictionalized province of the Balkans. Its about a female narrator and her relationship to her grandfather, who's a doctor. It's a saga about doctors and their relationships to death throughout all these wars in the Balkans."Hamilton, Ted (25 March 2009). [https://web.archive.org/web/20120307133642/http://cornellsun.com/node/36204 "Student Artist Spotlight: Tea Bajraktarevic"] (interview). 'Cornell Daily Sun'. Archived 7 March 2012. Retrieved 12 April 2014.

Reception



The poet Charles Simic wrote in 'The New York Review of Books' that 'The Tiger's Wife' "is a remarkable first novel". Simic went on to say, "Ta Obreht is an extraordinarily talented writer, skilled at combining different types of narrative from objective depiction of events to stories mixing the fabulous and the real in a way that brings to mind the novels of Mikhail Bulgakov, Gabriel Garca Mrquez, and Milorad Pavi, the Serbian author of 'Dictionary of the Khazars."'Simic, Charles (26 May 2011). [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/may/26/weird-beauty-well-told-tale/ "The Weird Beauty of the Well-Told Tale"]. 'NYRB' (nybooks.com). Retrieved 10 May 2011. A review in the 'New Zealand Herald' notes that, "Reviewers have praised Obreht's vibrant imagery and skilful interweaving of fact and folklore, ritual and superstition. British paper the 'Sunday Times' dubbed her 'a compelling new voice'; its rival the 'Daily Telegraph' 'a natural born storyteller'." 'New York Times' reviewer Liesl Schillinger praised the novel, asserting that it was "filled with astonishing immediacy and presence, fleshed out with detail that seems firsthand."

'The Tiger's Wife' won the British Orange Prize for Fiction in 2011. The annual prize, recognises "excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing from throughout the world", then included 30,000 cash and the "Bessie", a limited edition bronze figurine. At 25, Obreht was the youngest winner of the Orange Prize at the time of her award.

In 2011 Obreht was also a finalist for the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and the University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize for English-language writers age 18 to 30.

References



Category:2010 novels

Category:Novels by Ta Obreht

Category:Weidenfeld & Nicolson books

Category:Women's Prize for Fiction-winning works

Category:Books about tigers

Category:Novels about death

Category:Novels set in zoos

Category:2010 debut novels

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