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Sentence by sentence, no fictional debut in 2011 was more arresting than this novel.
— Cleveland Plain Dealer
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A beguiling blend of realism, myth and legend, this novel possesses a presence and force, essential ingredients for a novel that is very much rooted in reality yet transcends time.
— Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice
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A spectacular accomplishment . . . written in a wry, classical, luxuriant style reminiscent of Tolstoy.
— Marie Claire
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Every word, every scene, every thought is blazingly alive in this many-faceted, spellbinding, and rending novel of death, succor, and remembrance.
— Booklist (starred review)
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Gorgeous . . . one of the most extraordinary debut novels in recent memory.
— Vogue
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Obreht writes with an angel’s pen . . . creating a skein of descriptive passages flush with apt details and ringing with lyrical diction about city life, country life, private dreams and public difficulties.
— NPR’s “All Things Considered”
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In Obreht’s expert hands, the novel’s mythology, while rooted in a foreign world, comes to be somehow familiar, like the dark fairy tales of our own youth, the kind that spooked us into reading them again and again.
— O: The Oprah Magazine
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A compelling, persuasive writer, Obreht brings improbable elements to life on the page. Better, she makes them snap together with such magical skill that even the skeptical reader believes.
— Chicago Sun-Times
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Makes for a thrilling beginning to what will certainly be a great literary career.
— Elle
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Mesmerizing . . . [Tea] Obreht’s striking ability to explain the world through stories is matched by her patience with the parts of life—and death—that endlessly confound us.
— The Boston Globe
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So rich with themes of love, legends and mortality that every novel that comes after it this year is in peril of falling short in comparison with its uncanny beauty.
— Time
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That The Tiger’s Wife never slips entirely into magical realism is part of its magic. . . . Its graceful commingling of contemporary realism and village legend seems even more absorbing.
— The Washington Post
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Filled with astonishing immediacy and presence, fleshed out with detail that seems firsthand, The Tiger’s Wife is all the more remarkable for being the product not of observation but of imagination.
— The New York Times Book Review
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[Obreht] has a talent for subtle plotting that eludes most writers twice her age, and her descriptive powers suggest a kind of channeled genius. . . . No novel [this year] has been more satisfying.
— The Wall Street Journal
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Spectacular . . . [Téa Obreht] spins a tale of such marvel and magic in a literary voice so enchanting that the mesmerized reader wants her never to stop. [Grade:] A
— Entertainment Weekly
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Stunning . . . a richly textured and searing novel.
— Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times