The Tiger's Wife (global reading challenge #1)

The Tiger’s Wife is a complex read. It's set in former Yugoslavia, a country I visited years ago, on a summer trip. I still remember how unreal it felt when war started there some years later, and refugees arrived here in Germany - while young man who had family there went to join whichever side their family belonged to.

The book avoids the direct taking of sides by using fictional names for the places. To encompass the different "worlds" (before the war, during the war, after the war), the narrative crosses and connects different timelines. In addition to the timelines, the story itself changes from present narrative, to connected family stories of the past, to fairy-tale-like parts, and then back - it's a carpet of story altogether. Not all connects, some edges of the stories remain broken, missed, unsolved – and reading it I thought, that’s what war does. Making stories unwhole. Leaving open edges. Refusing the ending answers, the conclusion, the neat roundup.

Reading challenge + political/geographical notes:
The book was a chance find: I came across this book in the most unlikely of places: in Spain, on a beach supermarket shelf. Unsure if to by it, i looked for an online review - that's how i came across a book blog from the UK (savidge reads), which i recently revisited. Following a link from there, i arrived at a “global reading challenge”. The task: to expand ones reading boundaries by reading a novel from each continent in 2012. I blogged about it below, with my continental booklist of 2011: books by continents. The Tiger's Wife now is my first official reading challenge book.

And following the theme of borders and boundaries: the map above is from my old school book. In it, Yugoslavia is still 1 counry: "Jugoslawien", just like Czechosolovakia ("Tscheslowakai), and like Russia. While Germany is still 2 countries in relating blue colors: "Bundesrepublik Deutschland" and "DDR". Makes you realize how things changed in the last 30 years. And how lucky any country is that makes it through a split or a reunion without war.