50
Used, New, and Out of Print Books - We Buy and Sell - Powell's Books
Cart |
|  my account  |  wish list  |  help   |  800-878-7323
Hello, | Login
MENU
  • Browse
    • New Arrivals
    • Bestsellers
    • Featured Preorders
    • Award Winners
    • Audio Books
    • See All Subjects
  • Used
  • Staff Picks
    • Staff Picks
    • Picks of the Month
    • 50 Books for 50 Years
    • 25 Best 21st Century Sci-Fi & Fantasy
    • 25 PNW Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books From the 21st Century
    • 25 Memoirs to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Global Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Women to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books to Read Before You Die
  • Gifts
    • Gift Cards & eGift Cards
    • Powell's Souvenirs
    • Journals and Notebooks
    • socks
    • Games
  • Sell Books
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Find A Store

PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media − and booksellers.

Guests

Enter "The Tiger"

by John Vaillant, August 30, 2010 11:19 AM
Hello!

Powell's has been kind enough to hand me the mike this week. The occasion for this indulgence is The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, which came out a few days ago. It's a relief, really, because the suspense has been killing me. This was a three-and-a-half year trip: from the realization in Banff, Alberta, that, holy cow, this story is completely out of hand, I have to write it, to Beijing, Vladivostok, and into Primorye, the Siberian tiger's last stronghold. And, finally, to this moment: all of us here together, packed into this little blog.

The Tiger is set in Russia, in the dead of winter, during the chaotic aftermath of perestroika. Near Russia's far eastern border with China, a Siberian tiger is hunting, and a man is hunting, too. The man is a poacher, desperately poor, and he shoots the tiger and wounds it. The injured tiger remembers this man, follows him home, trashes his stuff, and kills his dogs. Then it lies down by the poacher's door and waits. But that is only the beginning; things get weirder and scarier from there. As the inspector who was sent in to investigate this case said to me, "There are many people who don't believe this actually happened. They think it's some phantasm of my imagination. But it was real. There are the facts."

A lot of people have asked me how I came across this story, and it was thanks to the Banff Mountain Festival where I saw a documentary called Conflict Tiger. I didn't know much about the film going in — something about poachers and Siberian tigers — but I was hooked from the opening shot: a wide-angle panorama of snowbound forest paired with this shrill, skirling soundtrack. About 15 minutes later I felt — and this is precisely what I felt — a bolt of recognition to the forehead: sudden, exhilarating and terrifying all at once. Thematically speaking, I had visited this country before in my first book, The Golden Spruce. But that true story of humans and nature in collision didn't have a tiger in it. The film lasted an hour, and I was riveted to my chair, squirming as quietly as I could. As soon as I got home, I called the director, Sasha Snow (his real name), and liked him immediately. We work in different media, on different continents, but it was clear that we were tuned to the same frequency. He encouraged me to go to Russia myself. Since then, we have become friends, to the point that he is now making a documentary of The Golden Spruce.

I was captivated by Snow's film, but I was also left with lingering questions. I wanted to know more about the poacher, Markov, who did not survive to be interviewed, but who left family, friends and tantalizing clues, and I wanted to know more about the tiger's other victims.

I also wanted to know more about the inspector, Yuri Trush, the man charged with solving these reciprocal crimes against nature and who, in so doing, got caught up in them himself.

And I wanted to try to understand this tiger: its strange and spooky sentience, its frightening capacity for absorbing bullets and holding a grudge, and its apparent preference for only the most dangerous adversaries. What drives an animal like that, I wondered, across the years and miles, through Arctic cold?

Finally, I wanted to understand the desperate circumstances that set this serial tragedy in motion. So I flew and drove and rode and walked and pestered and sat and listened and read and wrote until, finally, a couple of years later, I felt confident that I had the goods, and that you would have The Tiger.

For more info, visit: thetigerbook.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JohnVaillant

Twitter: JohnVAILLANT




Books mentioned in this post

Golden Spruce

John Vaillant

Tiger A True Story of Vengeance

John Vaillant
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##

Most Read

  1. Best Fiction of 2020 by Powell's Books
  2. 25 Books to Read Before You Die: 21st Century by Powell's Staff
  3. Midyear Roundup 2021: The Best Books of the Year (So Far) by Powell's Staff
  4. The 11 Best Places to Read by Will Schwalbe
  5. 25 Books to Read Before You Die: Pacific Northwest Edition by Powell's Staff

Blog Categories

  • Interviews
  • Original Essays
  • Lists
  • Q&As
  • Playlists
  • Portrait of a Bookseller
  • City of Readers
  • Required Reading
  • Powell's Picks Spotlight

2 Responses to "Enter "The Tiger""

Jaime Alonso January 6, 2011 at 07:20 AM
John I just finished reading - The Golden Spruce - I could not put it down. My son gave this to me for Christmas. I can't help but wonder how the event of cutting down the spruce has changed things. Has it focused attention on logging even more? Has it united the Haida and made them re-think their own practices? Did Hadwin understand the effects of his actions? Not simple questions to answer. Oddly it comes at a time when I am planning to re-forest a property I own. I like that you leave these questions to the reader, I will think about this book for a long time. All the best!!

Egon Speneder September 20, 2010 at 11:29 PM
What a great book ! I just finished reading "The Tiger" and I just couldn't put it down. John Vaillant has insight which is quite rare. The research he has done, and the way he approaches the subject is really quite unique and perceptive. The extra material he comes up with and the added stories makes for a rich understanding of the kind of majestic creature we are dealing with here. I found Chapter 13 an indication of just how well Vaillant covers animal psychology, by what is probably an almost forgotten Estonian born Baron/Professor, with his view of "umwelt" and "Umgebung" from the view of the creature. A rare and keen understanding which few "Western Writers" would be able to grasp let alone understand. I also liked his acknowledgment of Native tradition and understanding of the mystery surrounding Tigers who would recognize any Hunter who infact has at sometime in the past killed one of their own. This book is no simple hunting tale, it covers Siberian History and feeds you with everything related to the circumstances that took place in the Primorye Territory in the late 1990's to bring about this deliberate monstrous act. Well done John, it's worth reading again and then lending it to my Hunting buddies in Northern B.C.

Result(s) 2

Post a comment:

*Required Fields
Name*
Email*
  1. Please note:
  2. All comments require moderation by Powells.com staff.
  3. Comments submitted on weekends might take until Monday to appear.
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram

  • Help
  • Guarantee
  • My Account
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Security
  • Wish List
  • Partners
  • Contact Us
  • Shipping
  • Sitemap
  • © 2022 POWELLS.COM Terms