"the Tiger's Wife" by Tea Obreht

A new year and a new book for bookclub this month. 

"the Tiger's Wife" by Tea Obreht

It's a debut novel as was "The Language of Flowers" that we read last month.  Tea Obreht won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2011 - not bad for a debut book.  Although I've read a couple of other Orange prize winning books and have wondered how they won, so we'll see what this one is like.

The blurb:

"A tiger escapes from the local zoo, padding through ruined streets and onwards, to a ridge above the Balkan village of Galina.  His nocturnal visits hold the villagers in terrified thrall.  But for one boy, the tiger is a thing of magic - Shere Khan awoken from the pages of The Jungle Book.

Natalia is the granddaugher of that boy.  Now a doctor, she is visiting orphanages after another war has devastated the Balkans.  On this journey, she receives word of her beloved grandfather's death, far from their home, in circumstances shrouded in mystery.

From fragments of stories her grandfather told her as a child, Natalia realises he may have died searching for the 'deathless man', a vagabond who was said to be immortal.  Struggling to understand why a man of science would undertake such a quest, she stumbles upon a clue that will lead her to a tattered copy of 'The Jungle Book', and then to the extraordinary story of the tiger's wife."

I'm halfway through the book (much to the detriment of my messy house) and I'm finding the tale intriguing so far. I think I've worked out who the tiger's wife is and I'm definitely wanting to know more about the deathless man, one meeting so far isn't enough.  I do have to put it down tho, because I don't think take away tea two nights in a row is a good thing.