THE TIGER'S WIFE: Discussion Schedule February 2012

[Melissa_W Moderator]

We journey to the Balkans this month with Tea Obreht's The Tiger's Wife.  The novel was a National Book Award Finalist and one of the 10 Best Books of 2011 (according to the NYT).

Discussion Schedule: 

Week 1, February 6 - 12:  Chapter 1 (The Coast) through Chapter 3 (The Diggers)

Week 2, February 13 - 19:  Chapter 4 (The Tiger) through Chapter 6 (The Fire)

Week 3, February 20 - 26:  Chapter 7 (The Butcher) through Chapter 9 (The Bear)

Week 4, February 27 - March 4:  Chapter 10 (The Crossroads) through Chapter 13 (The River) and the Novel as a Whole

(There's also a little pre-Chapter 1 bit and post-Chapter 13, not labelled as an introduction or epilogue, too.)

The Tiger's Wife is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audio.

[Melissa_W Moderator]

Some maps to orient ourselves (when I learned geography, Yugoslavia was a country so I need a little help):

A rather simple map of the Balkan peninsula at World Atlas: http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/balkans.htm

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Balkan_topo_en.jpg (map) and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkans (article)

Historical maps from the University of Texas-Austin: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/history_balkans.html

1918 "ethnographic" map by Jovan Cvijić: http://www.wdl.org/en/item/93/

The Google Image search results: https://www.google.com/search?q=map+of+the+balkans&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&...

And this quite interesting map "video" showing the changing boundaries of the region from 1AD - 2000AD:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IzM8jOctyE

[Melissa_W Moderator]

Tea's website (www.teaobreht.com) has a short biography as well as some links to other news stories about The Tiger's Wife (like the note that it won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction, something I forgot).

[Fozzie]

I had to remind myself where the book takes place too and looked at some maps.  However, Tea deliberately used imaginary places for the story, so I didn't spend too much time.