The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

The Tiger's Wife

Tea Obreht

In the war savaged Balkans a young doctor retells the stories of her grandfather's life. Despite fearsome beasts and human cruelty, this book makes me believe that it is possible to meet death with hope.

Extract
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. One, which I learned after his death, is the story of how my grandfather became a man; the other, which he told me, is of how he became a child again.
Parallels
  • Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  • The Story of Forgetting by Stephan Merrill Block
  • Whit by Iain Banks