The Tiger's Wife (2011) (edit title/settings)

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• Natalia Stefanović: Doctor, granddaughter, teller of the story somewhat.
• Mother Vera: Natalia's great-grandmother.
• Barba Ivan: Father of the priest caring for the orphans in Brejevina whom Natalia and Zora stay with.
• Dari: Leader of the family digging in Barba's vineyard.
• Nada: Wife of Barba and mother of the priest caring for the orphans.
• Grandfather: Natalia's grandfather
• Dariša: Darisa the Bear, hunter, taxidermist, tries to help the village by trapping and killing the tiger but is unsuccessful.
• Marko Parović: Last living member of Natalia's grandfathers village who remembers the tiger incident.
• Hassan Effendi: Father of Amana and the tiger's wife
• Dominic Lazlo: Grandfather's assistant when he served as first triage assistant in the National Army
• Bako: Nickname or name for Natalia's grandmother.
• Mr. Bogdan Dankov: Taxidermist who trains Darisa the Bear.
• Duré: A mechanic discovered by Natalia to be digging in a vineyard with his extended family
• Zóra: Natalia's outspoken friend since childhood who is also a doctor
• Fra Antun: The priest taking care of the orphans in Brejevina.
• Fedrizzi: The Magnificent Fedrizzi!! The skull of which is purchased by Natalia and Zora for the medical classes.
• Blind Orlo: A hustler and a scammer who taught the apothocary how to read people.
• The Apothecary: From her grandfather's village, one of few who he actually liked to be around and probably influenced him to become a doctor.
• The Tiger's Wife: Luka's deaf-mute wife.
• Luka: The butcher of Galina who abuses his deaf-mute wife.
• M. Dobravka: Natalia's schoolteacher who served as the motivator for her becoming a physician.
• Ori: An adolescent boy who sold fake designer clothing and was romantically involved with Natalia.
• Gavran "Gavo" Gailé: The deathless man; man who was shot twice in the back of the head at his own funeral and continued to live.
• Marek: The son of the big man in town who requests the presence of a younger Grandfather when a number of people were apparently dying from tuberculosis.
• Jovo: Galina blacksmith
• Mića the Cleaver: Technical assistant who prepared the cadavers for the medical students
• Avgustin: Specialist in producing plastic replicas of human parts for medical and dental students. Natalia contacts him to obtain an illegal human skull.
• Slavko: A neighbor to Grandfather's lake house
• Amana: The sister of the Tiger's Wife who Luka loved.
• Korčul: Luka's father who desperately wants a grandchild
• Magdalena: Dariša much loved older sister. He fawns over her because she has epilepsy.

Quotes edit see section history

• “You know I've no patience for fools.”

  Grandfather

• “Zora was a woman of principle, an open atheist. At the age of thirteen, a priest had told her that animals had no souls, and she had said, 'Well then, f**k you, Pops,' and walked out of church.”

  Zora

• “My mother always says that fear and pain are immediate, and that, when they're gone, we're left with the concept, but not the true memory - why else, she reasons, would anyone give birth more than once?”

  Natalia's mother

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• When your fight has purpose—to free you from something, to interfere on the behalf of an innocent—it has a hope of finality. 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 come before them. Then the fight is endless, and comes in waves and waves, but always retains its capacity to surprise those who hope against it.

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• “When men die, they die in fear,” he said. “They take everything they need from you, and as a doctor it is your job to give it, to comfort them, to hold their hand. But children die how they have been living—in hope. They don’t know what’s happening, so they expect nothing, they don’t ask you to hold their hand—but you end up needing them to hold yours. With children, you’re on your own. Do you understand?”

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• In the end, all you want is someone to long for you when it comes time to put you in the ground.

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• My mother always says that fear and pain are immediate, and that, when they’re gone, we’re left with the concept, but not the true memory—why else, she reasons, would anyone give birth more than once?

  Highlighted by 190 Kindle customers

• He learned, too, that when confounded by the extremes of life—whether good or bad—people would turn first to superstition to find meaning, to stitch together unconnected events in order to understand what was happening. He learned that, no matter how grave the secret, how imperative absolute silence, someone would always feel the urge to confess, and an unleashed secret was a terrible force.

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• The fact that you are in a hurry is of no particular interest to them; in their opinion, if you are making your journey in a hurry, you are making it poorly.

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• “But the greatest fear is that of uncertainty,” Gavran Gailé is saying. “They are uncertain about meeting my uncle, of course. But they are uncertain, above all, of their own inaction: have they done enough, discovered their illness soon enough, consulted the worthiest physicians, consumed the best medicines, uttered the correct prayers?”

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• “Fuck. You go looking for a gnat and you find a donkey.”

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• The distance of the fighting created the illusion of normalcy, but the new rules resulted in an attitude shift that did not suit the Administration’s plans. They were going for structure, control, for panic that produced submission—what they got instead was social looseness and lunacy.

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• 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. One, which I learned after his death, is the story of how my grandfather became a man; the other, which he told to me, is of how he became a child again.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Zdrevkov: Village where Grandfather dies.
• Brejevina: Site of the orphanages to which Natalia and Zóra travel to inoculate the orphans.
• Galina: The village that Natalia's grandfather was born in. This was also the location of her grandfather when he died.
• Verimovo: The location of Grandfather's lake house abandoned during the Bosnian Wars.
• Sarobor: Where Grandfather met and married Bako. The two lived there during their early marriage.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Death and loss: Describe this theme.
• Superstitions and Folk Beliefs

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Téa Obreht (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Orange Prize for Fiction (2011)
• National Book Award (Finalist, 2011: Fiction)
• Indies Choice Book Award (2012: Adult Debut)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3615.B73T54
• Dewey: 813.6

Notes for Parents edit see section history

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Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

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