The Tiger’s Wife

★ 歐普拉2011年度選書第1名★

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　　★美國「國家書卷獎」決選
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　　承接馬奎斯文學桂冠，以前南斯拉夫為背景，魔幻寫實愛的故事

　　烽火下的生靈，恐懼傳說中神祕的老虎，與不能說的妻子
　　唯有發現真相，能啟動命運。
　　承續「魔幻寫實」桂冠，第一本以「前南斯拉夫」為背景的家族故事

　　在動盪不息的年代裡，現實與虛幻早已模糊難辨。
　　作者出神入化地融合史實、故事與民間傳說，
　　文字典雅、神奇、秀麗，故事情節扣人心弦，兼具魔力及想像力。

　　年輕醫師娜塔莉亞隨慈善志工醫療隊，來到多年戰事擾攘下的前南斯拉夫，為孤兒院兒童施打疫苗，卻因當地村落的長久迷信和祕密而計畫受挫……此時驚聞外公過世惡耗，娜塔莉亞不禁悲從中來，她無法理解外公為何離家出走、客死異鄉？隨著娜塔莉亞的回憶，她從外公四歲起每年帶她去動物園看老虎，胸口總放著一本舊版燙金字的吉卜林《森林王子》，逐一記起外公對她說過的故事。

　　娜塔莉亞記得外公說過多年前跟「死不了的男人」見過幾次面，這位四處飄泊的男子宣稱自己不會死，也不會變老。但是有個故事外公從來沒有告訴她，卻最為精彩，她也必須自己發掘：二次大戰的一個冬夜，外公小時候的村莊被大雪包圍，甚至連逐漸逼近的德軍都無法侵入，然而村裡卻籠罩在另一股可怕的陰影之下：一隻披著黑暗外衣的老虎，愈來愈逼近村落，有位特別的姑娘愛上了老虎，成為老虎的妻子……

　　「兩個故事有如神祕的河流，貫穿外公生平其他情事。」作者蒂亞．歐布萊特以兼具想像力和驚人布局的敘事功力，展開一段穿越生死謎團的旅程，而故事最終的答案正等待被發現。

　　NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST ‧ NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

　　Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Tea Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker’s twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will establish her as one of the most vibrant, original authors of her generation.

　　In a Balkan country mending from years of conflict, Natalia, a young doctor, arrives on a mission of mercy at an orphanage by the sea. By the time she and her lifelong friend Zora begin to inoculate the children there, she feels age-old superstitions and secrets gathering everywhere around her. Secrets her outwardly cheerful hosts have chosen not to tell her. Secrets involving the strange family digging for something in the surrounding vineyards. Secrets hidden in the landscape itself.

　　But Natalia is also confronting a private, hurtful mystery of her own: the inexplicable circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. After telling her grandmother that he was on his way to meet Natalia, he instead set off for a ramshackle settlement none of their family had ever heard of and died there alone. A famed physician, her grandfather must have known that he was too ill to travel. Why he left home becomes a riddle Natalia is compelled to unravel.
 
　　Grief struck and searching for clues to her grandfather’s final state of mind, she turns to the stories he told her when she was a child. On their weeklytrips to the zoo he would read to her from a worn copy of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, which he carried with him everywhere; later, he told her stories of his own encounters over many years with “the deathless man,” a vagabond who claimed to be immortal and appeared never to age. But the most extraordinary story of all is the one her grandfather never told her, the one Natalia must discover for herself. One winter during the Second World War, his childhood village was snowbound, cut off even from the encroaching German invaders but haunted by another, fierce presence: a tiger who comes ever closer under cover of darkness. “These stories,” Natalia comes to understand, “run like secret rivers through all the other stories” of her grandfather’s life. And it is ultimately within these rich, luminous narratives that she will find the answer she is looking for.

　　★本書中譯版《老虎的妻子》由時報出版發行。

作者簡介

蒂亞．歐布萊特(Tea Obreht)

　　於1985年出生於前南斯拉夫的首都貝爾格勒，十二歲以後就一直住在美國。她的文章曾發表在《紐約客》、《大西洋月刊》、《哈潑雜誌》，及《衛報》，並曾被選入《美國最佳短篇小說》。她也被《紐約客》選為40歲以下美國小說家最好的二十人之一，並且是其中最年輕的一位。《老虎的妻子》為其第一部作品，她寫作此書時年僅26歲，但旋即以此書獲得英國柑橘獎，並入圍「美國國家書卷獎」文學類決選五強，及入選亞馬遜書店十大好書、和《紐約時報》十大好書

　　Tea Obreht was born in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia in 1985 and has lived in the United States since the age of twelve. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, and The Guardian, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. 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. Tee Obreht lives in New York.