The story opens with the murder of Anwar Sadat, a well-known womanizer in a small Indonesian hamlet. An irate teenage boar hunter named Margio initially admits to the murder, and one of Anwar's daughters, Maesa Dewi, was there at the time. However, Major Sadrah, the town's sole military commander, is unable to identify a motive. When Sadrah confronts Margio at the police station, he discloses that he is not the murderer; rather, Margio believes the crime was perpetrated by a ghostly ancestral tiger who lives inside his body.
This English translation was published in 2015 and along with Beauty is a Wound was his first work to be translated. Beauty is a Wound was Longlisted for the 2016 Booker International Prize
Eka Kurniawan writes beautifully, and his prose sparkles and has an easy flow to it. Comparisons to Gabriel Garcia Marquez would not be off the mark, and Man Tiger is both caustic and beautiful, with dark stories of Margio's unhappy family and its abusive father grounding the book's magical components.

I included this great little book of my list of Best SE Asian Novels to read..
https://quizlit.org/se-asia-best-books ( )

Fiction, it has been argued multiple times, is a window into the human soul and the human imagination. Nowhere is this more explicitly evident than in Kurniawan's 'Man Tiger'-the wry tale of Margio and his innate supernatural white female tiger which he unwittingly unleashes upon his mother's lover. The novel follows Margio's musings, from the day he discovers the beast within to the moment it emerges in its predatory wrath.

Besides its plot, what is equally tantalizing about this novel is its English translation which I wholeheartedly believe to be reflective of the original. The nuance is present in both its native language and in its English allowing 'Man Tiger' to transcend linguistic barriers and impart a profound message about actions and their consequences across the generations. ( )

3.5 stars

In the opening of this book, we learn that one man has brutally murdered another. As the book explores the lead-up to this moment from several different angles, charting the deep and tragic relationships among members of an Indonesian family, we arrive at a fuller understanding of what has occurred, and why.

This book was longlisted for the Man Booker International in 2016, and it's definitely a capital-L-Literary novel. With that said, I'm not sure that I'd say that I "enjoyed" it--it's definitely not a happy book. I wasn't really prepared for the darker content, especially the pretty graphic descriptions of violence and the domestic violence/sexual assault. I definitely think I see why this was done, and I think it was powerful, but I don't think that this is a sheer-enjoyment type of book. ( )

Originally published at https://reallifereading.com/2016/10/05/man-tiger-by-eka-kurniawan/

While not as well-rounded as Beauty is A Wound, Man Tiger, first published in 2004, is a great introduction to Eka Kurniawan and Indonesian literature. After all, it tops out at 172 pages, versus Beauty is a Wound (first published in 2002) which has 470 pages.

Man Tiger is not so much a whodunnit as a whydunnit. There is a murder. A man in a small village has been killed. Everyone knows that it was Margio, who insists:

“It wasn’t me,” he said calmly and without guilt. “There is a tiger inside my body.”

There are a lot of mystical elements to the story, which is told in a cyclical, rather conversational manner (perhaps in the Indonesian storytelling fashion?). But this is also a story about an ill-matched relationship, a couple who are constantly at loggerheads, a broken family.

Man Tiger could be described as crime fiction, maybe magic realism (although when I see those two words, I tend to flee from the book, so scratch that), domestic fiction? I don’t know, I guess the easy way out would be to file it under ‘translated fiction’ as it doesn’t really seem to fit into any proper genre. But if you’re looking for a different, diverse, translated read, one that’s quick, one that’s different, and yet also gory (you should see the way Margio kills the man), passionate, and just completely apt for autumn (i.e. ripe for any Readers Imbibing in Peril, or just up for a weird read).



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Well written, but I think some of the Indonesian author's words and ideas did not translate well into English. This is the story of a surprisingly violent murder in a small village, where a 20-year old boy-man tears open the throat of an older villager in the opening chapter. The rest of the book is spent providing the backstory of what motivated young Margio (the man tiger) to act as he did. I thought the book was well paced, but found the inconsistent timeline a bit hard to follow. ( )