For most of us, our first introduction to the concept of magic is through the stories told us by our elders. As we grow up, we typically leave these tales behind. Yet even as we congratulate ourselves for embracing a world of invigorating realism and stark practicalities, we realize that something is lost. Our connection to our own past, to the previous generations, and to the magic of unconstrained imagination—these are all linked together through such narratives. For this reason the stories of childhood are often remembered more vividly than the actual quotidian events of our earliest years.
Natalia Stefanovic, the narrator for much of Téa Obreht's novel The Tiger's Wife , has been profoundly shaken by news of her grandfather's death, and finds herself returning to the fanciful stories he had related to her of his own past. These accounts seem so true-to-life, despite their fantastic elements, that Natalia is driven to probe deeper into her grandfather's personal history in a quest to uncover the biographical roots of his improbable narratives. The line between the imaginative excesses of storytelling and the brutish facts of modern reality begin to blur almost from the start of Obreht's novel—and the border between fact and fiction is still left largely undefended even at the conclusion of this masterful work.
The same cannot be said for the other borders dealt with in The Tiger's Wife . The novel is set against the backdrop of the Balkan wars that splintered the former Yugoslavia and devastated the combating parties. Their conflicts seems both timeless and endless. "When your fight has purpose—to free you of something, to interfere on behalf of an innocent—it has a hope of finality," writes Obreht, who was born in Belgrade in 1985, but left at age seven and spent much of her youth in the United States. "When the fight is about unraveling—when it is about your name, the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your name to some landmark or event—there is nothing but hate, and the long, slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed it, meticulously, by the ones who came before them."
Think of these as narrative and counter-narrative. On the one hand, we find the fairy tales of youth, accounts that feed our imagination and broaden our horizons. Opposed to these are the historic resentments and antagonisms—also handed down to us in the form of stories from our elders—which constrain our world view and disfigure our emotional attachments. Both kinds of stories play a role in The Tiger's Wife , one constitutive and liberating, the other destructive and self- immolating.
Both Natalia and her grandfather are doctors, and the constant bloodshed resulting from bombings, land-mines, and combat, as well as the dislocations and disease that spread in their aftermath, bring the medical profession into constant contact with the turmoil and violence of the era. In this context, Natalia's grandfather shares with her the story of his encounters with Gavran Gailé "the deathless man"—loosely based on Koschei the deathless, a folktale hero from Eastern Europe—a mysterious figure who, like the doctors and caregivers, is drawn to locales where violence is prevalent and lifespans are short.
The grandfather encounters the deathless man several times over a period of decades. At the first meeting, Gailé has literally risen from his coffin— Twilight fans take note!—and is shot two times in the head by a mourner who doesn't want to see the funeral canceled. But even these bullet wounds are insufficient to lay low the deathless man. Natalia’s grandfather is stunned by Gailé's unwillingness to receive medical treatment, and even more amazed when the risen corpse insists that he cannot die, although he can predict when others are about to meet their end.
The story of the deathless man is presented alongside a tale about the "tiger's wife"—another dark and fantastic story from the grandfather’s past. During his childhood years, a tiger escaped from a distant zoo settles in the outskirts of town. The residents are fearful, and all their efforts to kill or capture the tiger are unsuccessful. Yet a deaf- mute, married to the local butcher, seems to have some special relationship with the tiger, apparently meeting up with the wild animal late at night when the rest of the village is asleep. When the butcher disappears, and the wife shows signs of pregnancy, dark tales start to spread, filled with rumor, superstition and accusation—the woman murdered her husband….or had the tiger kill him….the child in her belly is the tiger’s…or the devil's…or perhaps both.
The grandfather is drawn both to the woman, and to the tiger. His prized possession is a copy of Kipling’s The Jungle Book , and the arrival of the tiger in the village seems like a story out of the book come true—again Obreht blurs the line between fantastic fiction and reality. When a famous hunter comes to the village, hoping to kill the tiger, the boy is frantic. He wants to intervene, and save both the tiger and the "tiger’s wife," but is uncertain how he can halt the inevitable tragedy he sees looming in the near future.
Obreht presents these tales from the past against the context of Natalia's activities in the aftermath of her grandfather’s death. She is treating orphans housed at a monastery when she hears the news, and is determined to make the trek to the place of his death and retrieve his personal effects. In the course of this journey, she becomes convinced that her grandfather, in his final days, had been seeking out the deathless man. As part of her attempt to find both solace and closure, she too sets out in search of Gavran Gailé.
The Tiger's Wife is fanciful and heartrending by turns, and it reminds me of many of the masterpieces of magical realism—such as One Hundred Years of Solitude , Midnight's Children and The Tin Drum —in its striking juxtaposition of dark chapters in actual history books with the stuff of myths and legends. I am especially impressed by Obreht's ability to hold back at key junctures, allowing her narrative to advance by means of hints and silences rather than through detail and exposition. She shows tremendous restraint for such a young writer (she was only 25 when this novel was published), and embraces a pleasing sort of ambiguity, one that in the hands of a lesser author would be mere vagueness. At the end of this book, you will be left with more than a few unanswered questions, and even the "facts" that have been presented with reasonable clarity are susceptible to reinterpretation or a symbolic reading.
But what is irreducible is the allure of the magic and the power of the human connection, which are both presented in various forms and guises in The Tiger's Wife . This is an imaginative book that expands our sense of the possible, but also a thought-provoking work about different levels of responsibility—of child to elder, of doctor to patient, of people to animals, of races and religions to each other. This is a novel of caring and compassion, but not in a sentimental or stereotypical fashion, rather in a way grounded on both myth and history. In short, Téa Obreht is a young woman who has delivered a frighteningly mature book. The fact that much of it is presented with overtones of a fairy tale or a story for children only makes it all the more impressive.
Ted Gioia writes on music, books and popular culture. His most recent book is The Birth (and Death) of the Cool .