Sobre El Autor
Téa Obreht was born in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia in 1985. She immigrated with her family to the United States in 1997. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, The New York Times, and The Guardian as well as being anthologized in The Best American Short mostrar más Stories and The Best American Non-Required Reading. Her first novel, The Tiger's Wife, was published in 2011 and won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos
Créditos de la imagen: From publisher
Obras de Téa Obreht
Obras relacionadas
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Nombre canónico
- Obreht, Téa
- Fecha de nacimiento
- 1985-09-30
- Género
- female
- Nacionalidad
- Yugoslavia
USA - País (para mapa)
- USA
- Lugar de nacimiento
- Belgrade, Yugoslavia
- Lugares de residencia
- Cyprus
Egypt
Ithaca, New York, USA
Belgrade, Serbia
Palo Alto, California, USA
New York City, New York, USA - Educación
- Cornell University
University of Southern California - Ocupaciones
- novelist
- Organizaciones
- Hunter College
- Premios y honores
- National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" (2010)
- Agente
- Seth Fishman (Gernert Company)
Miembros
Debates
The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht en Orange January/July (octubre 2013)
Reseñas
Listas
Overdue Podcast (1)
USA Road Trip (1)
Female Author (1)
Carole's List (1)
Magic Realism (1)
Indie Next Picks (1)
Premios
También Puede Gustarte
Autores relacionados
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 4
- También por
- 10
- Miembros
- 6,279
- Popularidad
- #3,908
- Valoración
- 3.6
- Reseñas
- 377
- ISBNs
- 77
- Idiomas
- 13
- Favorito
- 5
The Tiger’s Wife is the prize-winning debut novel by Téa Obreht, an author born in the former Yugoslavia. The book is set in an unnamed Balkan country, thought to be Serbia, and won her the Orange Prize for Fiction and nomination for many other awards. It is a dual timeline historical fiction with strong elements of magic realism and folktales.
Natalia Stefanovic lives in “The City” (probably Belgrade in Serbia, which was bombed in 1999). She has taken a trip to a clinic across the border, presumably in Croatia, with fellow-doctor Zoe to undertake immunisation of children in the area. While she is there she learns of her grandfather’s death, which inexplicably occurred in a small obscure coastal town called Zdrevkov, which no-one knew he was visiting, far from his home. Natalia tries to piece together her grandfather’s story and shed light on why he was in Zdrevkov. The book shifts between this search, and stories of her grandfather’s life. In particular it revolves around two folktales that interweave with her grandfather’s story.
“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.”
The first story is about the “deathless man,” Gavran Gailé, who can foresee people’s deaths but is unable to die himself. The second story, the Tiger’s Wife, involves a tiger which escaped from the zoo during WWII and sheltered around her grandfather’s childhood village Galina. The tiger forms a close bond with the deaf-mute, battered wife of the butcher, and triggers the villagers’ fears, anxiety and entrenched superstitions.
The book does not clearly outline the historical events, but makes references to WWII, its aftermath, and also the subsequent wars tearing the region into pieces. It makes references to the hardships her grandfather faces as a physician, being suspected of “loyalist feelings toward the unified state” and thus being suspended from practicing medicine, but continuing in secret. It deals with the trauma of the division of Yugoslavia. “Once separate, the pieces that made up our old country no longer carried the same characteristics that had formerly represented their respective parts of the whole.”
I found this to be an intriguing and beautifully written book. The descriptions of the aftermath of the war and the superstitious beliefs and actions of the villagers were insightful and vivid. It seemed to lose momentum however in the later parts of the book. I would definitely be keen to read another book by this author.… (más)