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Kristina
, December 17, 2017
(view all comments by Kristina)
Set in an unnamed province of the Balkans (most likely Belgrade, Serbia), “The Tiger’s Wife” is centered around the relationship between the protagonist, a young doctor named Natalia, and her grandfather, also a physician, who has recently died. Specifically, it explores the question of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the grandfather’s death: the bulk of the novel relates several stories that Natalia’s grandfather had told her from episodes earlier in his life. These stories have elements of fantasy or of magical realism. The book is ultimately a meditation on death, folklore and cultural practices surrounding death, and how communities and individuals deal with death. If you are a fan of the work of Gabriel Garcia Márquez, who provided inspiration for this book (Obreht’s first novel), this may be the book for you. However, I found the plotline a bit difficult to follow, felt that Obreht often spent far too much time on tangential stories and lateral characters, and felt that ultimately, the novel failed to come together neatly in the end. It left me rather bewildered and disappointed.
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