Man Tiger

by Eka Kurniawan, Benedict Anderson (Introduction), Labodalih Sembiring (Translator)

Overview

An unforgettable tale of literary magical realism from a critically acclaimed Indonesian writer who has been compared to Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Mark Twain

Longlisted for the International Man Booker, this “supernatural tale of murder and desire fascinatingly subverts the crime fiction genre” as it tells the story of a half-man, half-magical female white tiger (Huffington Post).

A wry, affecting tale set in a small town on the Indonesian coast, Man Tiger tells the story of two interlinked and tormented families and of Margio, a young man ordinary in all particulars except that he conceals within himself a supernatural female white tiger. The inequities and betrayals of family life coalesce around and torment this magical being. An explosive act of violence follows, and its mysterious cause is unraveled as events progress toward a heartbreaking revelation.

Lyrical and bawdy, experimental and political, this extraordinary novel announces the arrival of a powerful new voice on the global literary stage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781781688595
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	09/15/2015
Edition description:	Translatio
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	499,062
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Eka Kurniawan was born in Tasikmalaya, Indonesia in 1975. He studied philosophy at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta. He has published several novels, including Beauty Is a Wound and Man Tiger, as well as short stories. His novels have been published in a number of languages, including English.

Labodalih Sembiring is a freelance features reporter for English-language publications, a writer of fiction in English and Indonesian, an amateur photographer, and a landscape designer.

Editorial Reviews

…tight, focused and thrilling. Like a good crime novel, Man Tiger works best when read in a single sitting, and its propulsive suspense is all the more remarkable because Kurniawan reveals both victim and murderer in the first sentence.

The New York Times Book Review - Jon Fasman

★ 07/27/2015
Kurniawan makes his U.S. debut with this novel, along with the tour-de-force epic Beauty Is a Wound, also being published this fall. Tragic and imaginative, the story begins with the murder of Anwar Sadat, a known womanizer in a rural Indonesian village. An angry young boar hunter named Margio initially confesses to the killing, and one of Anwar’s daughters, Maesa Dewi, witnessed Margio at the scene of the crime. However, Major Sadrah, the town’s only military commander, can’t find a motive. When Sadrah speaks with Margio at the police station, Margio reveals that he is not the killer—rather, Margio believes a ghostly ancestral tiger that lives inside his body committed the murder. Kurniawan is a sly raconteur, and the easy flow of his prose shines in Sembiring’s translation. The narrative is told in a style that evokes oral storytelling traditions. It is conversational, cyclical, and tangential. The frequent digressions are used effectively for characterization and provide a larger understanding of the events leading to Anwar’s death. The world Kurniawan invents is familiar and unexpected, incorporating mystery, magical realism, and folklore. Biting and beautiful, the book’s mythical elements are grounded by grim accounts of Margio’s troubled family and its abusive patriarch, Komar bin Syueb. This wild and enthralling novel manages to entertain while offering readers insight into the traditions of a little-known South East Asian culture. Kurniawan has officially put the West on notice. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Winner of the Financial Times Emerging Voices Award

“Against the killings of those years and the collective amnesia used to blank out the fate of [Indonesia’s] victims—a kind of second death, as it were—Kurniawan’s fiction summons its legions of ghosts. Against the strongmen who presided over violence and abuse, it raises the dead Dewi Ayu and brings to life a magic tigress hungry for justice.”
—Siddhartha Deb, New Republic

“Tight, focused and thrilling. Like a good crime novel, Man Tiger works best when read in a single sitting, and its propulsive suspense is all the more remarkable because Kurniawan reveals both victim and murderer in the first sentence.”
—Jon Fasman, New York Times Book Review

“Can’t-Miss New Read”
—Huffington Post 2015 Fall Books Preview

“Without a doubt the most original, imaginatively profound, and elegant writer of fiction in Indonesia today: its brightest and most unexpected meteorite.”
—Benedict Anderson, author of Imagined Communities

“In terms of the literary novel, the year’s most stirring revelation is Eka Kurniawan … Imagine if Gogol adapted the films of Weerasethakul into novels.”
—Jonthan Sturgeon, Flavorwire

“[Man Tiger is] signature Kurniawan in its serious playfulness. It alternates flash and inner quiet. We feel everything from the tenderness of family meals to the roughness of a torn jugular.”
—BOMB Magazine

“The world Kurniawan invents is familiar and unexpected, incorporating mystery, magical realism, and folklore … Biting and beautiful … This wild and enthralling novel manages to entertain while offering readers insight into the traditions of a little-known South East Asian culture. Kurniawan has officially put the West on notice.
—Publishers Weekly

“Man Tiger is a novel of mystery, suspense, and magical realism … Kurniawan has already been compared to writers like Gabriel García Márquez, so he’s for sure one to put on your list.”
—Susie Rodarme, Book Riot

“[It’s] telling that many have deemed Kurniawan the next Pramoedya Ananta Toer, an acclaimed pioneer of socialist realism.”
—Gillian Terzis, The New Yorker

“A slim, wry story … at once elegant and bawdy, experimental, and political.”
—Allison Noelle Conner, The Offing (from The LA Review of Books)

“A supernatural tale of murder and desire fascinatingly subverts the crime genre … Kurniawan’s writing demonstrates an affinity with literary heavyweights such as, yes, García Márquez and Dostoevsky.”
—Guardian

“What good fortune that English-speaking readers may now find ourselves enchanted, confronted, and perhaps transformed by Kurniawan’s work.”
—Bookforum

“[Man Tiger’s] explosive prose and provocative employment of fantastical elements will startle any reader.”
—Claire Fallon, Huffington Post

“[Kurniawan] seems destined to join the ranks of our great storytellers like Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez.”
—Literary Hub

From the Publisher

2015-07-28
Newly translated work by the author of Beauty Is a Wound (2015). The story begins with the grisly murder of Anwar Sadat—not the Egyptian president assassinated in 1981 but, rather, a lazy and lascivious artist living in a small town on the Indian Ocean. The cause of death is no mystery: a young man named Margio is clearly guilty. What no one can figure out, though, is the boy's motive. Nor can they explain why Margio dispatched Anwar Sadat by ripping out the man's throat with his teeth. What nobody knows is that Margio wasn't quite himself when he attacked Anwar Sadat; Margio was, instead, possessed by a white tiger. This is the second of Kurniawan's novels to be published this year, and it shares a number of similarities with its predecessor. The first and most obvious is the porous boundary between the natural and the supernatural. Another is the way in which the author borrows formal elements from folklore and oral tradition. But, where Beauty Is a Wound is sprawling and disorderly, this novel is succinct and disciplined. This evolution in style doesn't work to the book's benefit, though. The narrator's voice is gossipy and close to the action—often the case in folklore—but the characters are almost never allowed to speak for themselves. And, although the story begins in medias res, the bulk of the book is a retrospective account of events leading up to the murder. Both stylistic choices keep the reader from getting close to Margio, Anwar Sadat, and their tragically intertwined families. And Kurniawan's commitment to economy means that potentially fascinating episodes—like Margio's decision to join the circus in order to learn from the tiger tamers—are reduced to a sentence or two. The readers most likely to be disappointed are those intrigued by the paranormal creature promised by the title: tiger sightings are few and far between. Lackluster effort from a talented young author.

Kirkus Reviews