Reading Group Discussion Questions—The Tiger’s Wife

1. What do you think of Natalia Stefanovic—first, as a character; second, as the novel's narrator?

2. Natalia's grandfather carries Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book around in his pocket. Why? And what is the thematic relationship of Kiplings's work to this one?

3. During their nighttime wandering, when they come upon the elephant, Natalia's grandfather says to her:

The story of this war—dates, names, who started it, why—that belongs to everyone. Not just the people involved in it, but the people...thousands of miles away, people who’ve never even been here or heard of it before.

What exactly does he mean? Does "this war" (or any war) belong to everyone—to the world? What are the ramifications of that idea with regard to humankind and conflict?

4. Follow-up to Question 3: Upon seeing the elephant, her grandfather says to Natalia, "it belongs only to you. And me.... You have to think carefully about where you tell it, and to whom. Who deserves to hear it?" Why is the story of the elephant different than the story of war? In what way might the shared secret of the elephant offer a ray of hope?

5. As a young boy, Natalia's grandfather considers Darisa, who hunted the tiger, as a betrayer. Why is the tiger sacred to Natalia's grandfather.

6. Natalia first thinks her grandfather's story of the tiger's wife is a fairy tale, but learns differently. What might that say, metaphorically, about all myth—in what way are stories true? What role does storytelling play in people's lives, especially when living under conditions of war? Why are fables, myths, and fairy tales important?

7. How did the teenagers react to the war around them? When reports of the teens' dangerous activities reached their parents, Natalia says, the adults "couldn't argue with there's a war on, we might all die anyway." If you had been those parents, what would your response have been?

8. Why does Natalia find she can't contradict the superstitions of the people digging for their dead relatives? She is a woman of science, after all.

9. What scars are left from the civil war in daily transactions between the populace?

10. This can be described as a coming-of-age story. What does Natalia come to learn at the end of the novel?

11. Death fills this novel: it is everywhere, past and present. In what way is Obreht's novel about coming to terms with death? What role, for instance, do "the tiger's wife" and "the deathless man," the novel's two central tales, play in its concern about mortality?

Birth—September 20, 1985 • Where—, Yugoslavia • Raised—; ; Georgia, & , USA • Education—B.A., University of Southern California; M.A. • Currently—lives in Ithica, New York

Tea Obreht was born in 1985 in the former Yugoslavia, and spent her childhood in Cyprus and Egypt before eventually immigrating to the in 1997.

Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Zoetrope: All-Story, , and , and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Non-Required Reading. The Tiger’s Wife (2011), is her first novel.

She has been named by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty and included in the National Book Foundation’s list of 5 Under 35. Tea Obreht lives in Ithaca, New York.

Among many influences, Obreht has mentioned in press interviews the Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Yugoslav Nobel Prize winner Ivo Andric, , , Isak Dinesen, and the children's writer . (From the publisher and Wikipedia.)