By: Kelly Malambri/Columnist
Dr. Natalia Stefanovic works with orphans in a destroyed but redeveloping area of an unnamed Balkan city. While doing so, she is confronted with the superstitious beliefs of citizens in the area and is haunted by the recent death of her grandfather.
In the midst of telling Stefanovic’s story in her novel, “The Tiger’s Wife,” Tea Obreht explores an ex-communist country’s history through allegories and fairy tales from the stories of her grandfather, which he told her before his death.
The young doctor narrates these fairy tales, which revolve around “the story of the tiger’s wife” and her grandfather’s tale, “the story of the deathless man.”
The book tells the history of Yugoslavia with little to no timeline, but the stories go back to World War II, which tell tales that relate to the strife that occurred in the country from then and until the present. Through the story of the wise tiger’s wife, along with the experience of Stefanovic and her grandfather, Obreht writes of a country run by a communist government that left the society ravished by its own soldiers.
Obreht was born in Belgrade. She left when she was 7 years old. After living in Egypt and Cyprus, Obreht came to America in 1997. She escaped the years the country faced such communism, and has been praised by many book critics, including The New York Times, for her ability to write a novel that captures war, and the effects of it, so well without ever having experienced the war herself.
The melting pot of stories of Stefanovic’s grandfather and the allegorical tales he told her as a child assimilate the novel into one major overview, a unique and refreshing approach to the novel, which makes the book extremely intriguing.
Stefanovic comes to realize that the stories her grandfather told her were not simply fairy tales, but that they were real stories of villagers whose stories related to those who lived in its communist state. As she lives and works at the orphanage in the Balkan village, the stories her grandfather told her begin to coincide with her real life as she learns more about the country she is in.
At the same time, this interconnectedness requires the reader to do a little more critical thinking, which many times left the story line fragmented in my mind. While it is a little difficult to piece the stories together, doing so proved to be an extremely rewarding experience as a reader.
Besides this small issue, it is an easy read, and is only 352 pages. The book is easy to complete during a busy semester, and its historical basis makes it one that readers will have much to learn from as well.
The novel provides a window into the country’s history that I knew little about. For example, the 1995 Srebrenica massacre was a horrific event of which I was not familiar with, and although not specifically mentioned in the novel, the story is based off of the effects of such massacres, which can be seen through the orphans that Stefanovic cares for, whom she claims were made into orphans by the country’s own soldiers. I am ashamed to say that before reading the novel and doing a little research, I had no idea about these events, making the book all the more worthwhile.
Obreht won the 2011 Orange Prize for her debut novel, making her the youngest writer in the history of the award to do so. The book is worth a read by all searching for a truly talented writer who has something to teach.
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