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The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
It’s December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia’s Far East. The tiger isn’t just killing people, it’s annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren’t random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again.
As he re-creates these extraordinary events, John Vaillant gives us an unforgettable portrait of this spectacularly beautiful and mysterious region. We meet the native tribes who for centuries have worshipped and lived alongside tigers, even sharing their kills with them. We witness the arrival of Russian settlers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, soldiers and hunters who greatly diminished the tiger populations. And we come to know their descendants, who, crushed by poverty, have turned to poaching and further upset the natural balance of the region.
This ancient, tenuous relationship between man and predator is at the very heart of this remarkable book. Throughout we encounter surprising theories of how humans and tigers may have evolved to coexist, how we may have developed as scavengers rather than hunters, and how early Homo sapiens may have fit seamlessly into the tiger’s ecosystem. Above all, we come to understand the endangered Siberian tiger, a highly intelligent super-predator that can grow to ten feet long, weigh more than six hundred pounds, and range daily over vast territories of forest and mountain.
Beautifully written and deeply informative, The Tiger circles around three main characters: Vladimir Markov, a poacher killed by the tiger; Yuri Trush, the lead tracker; and the tiger himself. It is an absolutely gripping tale of man and nature that leads inexorably to a final showdown in a clearing deep in the taiga.
As he re-creates these extraordinary events, John Vaillant gives us an unforgettable portrait of this spectacularly beautiful and mysterious region. We meet the native tribes who for centuries have worshipped and lived alongside tigers, even sharing their kills with them. We witness the arrival of Russian settlers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, soldiers and hunters who greatly diminished the tiger populations. And we come to know their descendants, who, crushed by poverty, have turned to poaching and further upset the natural balance of the region.
This ancient, tenuous relationship between man and predator is at the very heart of this remarkable book. Throughout we encounter surprising theories of how humans and tigers may have evolved to coexist, how we may have developed as scavengers rather than hunters, and how early Homo sapiens may have fit seamlessly into the tiger’s ecosystem. Above all, we come to understand the endangered Siberian tiger, a highly intelligent super-predator that can grow to ten feet long, weigh more than six hundred pounds, and range daily over vast territories of forest and mountain.
Beautifully written and deeply informative, The Tiger circles around three main characters: Vladimir Markov, a poacher killed by the tiger; Yuri Trush, the lead tracker; and the tiger himself. It is an absolutely gripping tale of man and nature that leads inexorably to a final showdown in a clearing deep in the taiga.
329 pages, Hardcover
First published August 24, 2010
About the author
John Vaillant
23 books521 followersJohn Vaillant is an author and freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and the Guardian, among others. His first book, The Golden Spruce (Norton, 2005), was a bestseller and won several awards, including the Governor General's and Rogers Trust awards for non-fiction (Canada). His second nonfiction book, The Tiger (Knopf, 2010), was an international bestseller, and has been published in 16 languages. Film rights were optioned by Brad Pitt’s film company, Plan B. In 2014 Vaillant won the Windham-Campbell Prize, a global award for non-fiction. In 2015, he published his first work of fiction, The Jaguar's Children (Houghton Mifflin), which was long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC and Kirkus Fiction Prizes, and was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize (Canada).
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April 19, 2023
Fearful symmetry indeed. In 1997, during time when the Soviet system had collapsed but nothing much had arisen to take its place, Vladimir Markov, desperate to provide for his family, made a very large mistake. In easternmost boreal Russia, he came across the remains of a huge wild boar and made off with it. Big mistake. The big pig was the prize of a local striped feline, and it took exception, a lot of exception. The region is a tough one and stealing anyone’s hard won resources is a big existential no-no. The creature eventually tracked the two-legged thief back to his home and waited.
There are scenes in the beginning of this book that will give you chills. A tiger has killed a man and a group of investigators are on the scene. Vaillant describes the remnants of the victim as the group very carefully follows the trail of carnage, seeing what has been left uneaten. The tiger is probably watching. I was hooked very early on. Although the book does not sustain that high level of tingle, it is a fascinating look at the largest feline on earth, the Siberian tiger, or more specifically, the Amur tiger. I particularly liked the author’s description: “this is what you get when you pair the agility and appetites of a cat with the mass of an industrial refrigerator.” Siberians, larger than the more familiar Bengal tigers, max out at about 800 pounds.
The author
The man-eater in question did not stop at one. Investigators could see that there was purpose to this cat. Tigers do not normally prey on people. But this one went out of his way to hunt down his first victim. It is no wonder that locals consider some tigers to be more than merely human. Some are thought to be imbued with a supernatural aspect, making these already pretty scary critters even more terrifying. Vaillant tells of the investigation and its conclusions. Along the way he offers a picture of this remotest part of Russia, and many of the very colorful characters who have called it home, past and present. The area appears to have more in common with the American wild west than with a vid-phone-chatting 21st century.
Vaillant looks at people’s innate reaction to tigers, reporting on a study which concludes that our awareness of predator-prey relationships is an in-born gift from our ancestors. There is a fascinating section on why predators are naturally selected for intelligence. A dumb tiger will starve to death if it does not first become a cat-sicle in the 40-below temperatures of winter in the Amur region.
But it is the relationship between people and the huge cat that is perfectly adapted to its taiga environment that is central to the story here. Players include local residents, poachers, a non-profit group paid to keep track of and protect remaining tigers, government officials, and the new and vibrant Chinese free market. Personal histories of many of the players offer a rainbow of local color. Each group has its own agenda regarding tigers and the central government is very far away, so rule, regulations and decisions are effectively local. The demise of the Soviet Union changed everything. Perestroika may have given birth to a new freedom to speak one’s mind, but the collapse of the state also gave its people the right to starve, making it that much more of a challenge keeping folks from hunting this regal predator for the many body parts for which there are lucrative markets. Profound environmental degradation has also driven the tiger into closer proximity to people, increasing the probability of conflict.
I had some small quibbles with the book. There are a passel of Russian words that are used to describe aspects of tigers and the local populace. It would have been helpful to have had a glossary at the back. The book could have used an index as well. That said, Vaillant’s tiger tale is nuanced. He reports on the pressures that are experienced by all the players here, reserving judgment, offering analysis and understanding instead. This is a fascinating look at a little-known creature in a nearly invisible part of the earth. Hopefully something can be done before the taiga tiger flames out entirely.
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal and Twitter pages. Well, actually Vaillant’s personal page is to his site for the book. There is a wealth of material here.
A CBC Radio interview with the author
A short Q&A with the author from Publishers Weekly
November 2, 2017 - National Geographic - Endangered Siberian Tiger Returns From Exile - by Sarah Gibbens
October 25, 2018 - NY Times - Divide and Preserve: Reclassifying Tigers to Help Save Them From Extinction - By Rachel Nuwer
There are scenes in the beginning of this book that will give you chills. A tiger has killed a man and a group of investigators are on the scene. Vaillant describes the remnants of the victim as the group very carefully follows the trail of carnage, seeing what has been left uneaten. The tiger is probably watching. I was hooked very early on. Although the book does not sustain that high level of tingle, it is a fascinating look at the largest feline on earth, the Siberian tiger, or more specifically, the Amur tiger. I particularly liked the author’s description: “this is what you get when you pair the agility and appetites of a cat with the mass of an industrial refrigerator.” Siberians, larger than the more familiar Bengal tigers, max out at about 800 pounds.
The author
The man-eater in question did not stop at one. Investigators could see that there was purpose to this cat. Tigers do not normally prey on people. But this one went out of his way to hunt down his first victim. It is no wonder that locals consider some tigers to be more than merely human. Some are thought to be imbued with a supernatural aspect, making these already pretty scary critters even more terrifying. Vaillant tells of the investigation and its conclusions. Along the way he offers a picture of this remotest part of Russia, and many of the very colorful characters who have called it home, past and present. The area appears to have more in common with the American wild west than with a vid-phone-chatting 21st century.
Vaillant looks at people’s innate reaction to tigers, reporting on a study which concludes that our awareness of predator-prey relationships is an in-born gift from our ancestors. There is a fascinating section on why predators are naturally selected for intelligence. A dumb tiger will starve to death if it does not first become a cat-sicle in the 40-below temperatures of winter in the Amur region.
But it is the relationship between people and the huge cat that is perfectly adapted to its taiga environment that is central to the story here. Players include local residents, poachers, a non-profit group paid to keep track of and protect remaining tigers, government officials, and the new and vibrant Chinese free market. Personal histories of many of the players offer a rainbow of local color. Each group has its own agenda regarding tigers and the central government is very far away, so rule, regulations and decisions are effectively local. The demise of the Soviet Union changed everything. Perestroika may have given birth to a new freedom to speak one’s mind, but the collapse of the state also gave its people the right to starve, making it that much more of a challenge keeping folks from hunting this regal predator for the many body parts for which there are lucrative markets. Profound environmental degradation has also driven the tiger into closer proximity to people, increasing the probability of conflict.
I had some small quibbles with the book. There are a passel of Russian words that are used to describe aspects of tigers and the local populace. It would have been helpful to have had a glossary at the back. The book could have used an index as well. That said, Vaillant’s tiger tale is nuanced. He reports on the pressures that are experienced by all the players here, reserving judgment, offering analysis and understanding instead. This is a fascinating look at a little-known creature in a nearly invisible part of the earth. Hopefully something can be done before the taiga tiger flames out entirely.
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal and Twitter pages. Well, actually Vaillant’s personal page is to his site for the book. There is a wealth of material here.
A CBC Radio interview with the author
A short Q&A with the author from Publishers Weekly
November 2, 2017 - National Geographic - Endangered Siberian Tiger Returns From Exile - by Sarah Gibbens
October 25, 2018 - NY Times - Divide and Preserve: Reclassifying Tigers to Help Save Them From Extinction - By Rachel Nuwer
April 24, 2011
Let's start with the moral of the story first: Do not fuck with an Amur tiger. Because if you do, she'll probably hunt you down, break into your cabin, drag your mattress across a frozen river, and lie down on it while she waits for you to come home so she can eat you. Literally eat you.
John Vaillant's narrative about Amur tigers and the people who live with them in the remote village of Sobolonye, Russia is compelling enough that you'll start looking suspiciously at your cat by the time you're a quarter of the way through. But although the narrative is brilliant, and possibly the star of the book, the book is far more than just narrative, as Vaillant paints a fully-realized portrait not only of the tiger, but of post-communist Russia and the people who live there.
Vaillant also happens to be a crack stylist:
I loved this book so much it's almost absurd.
John Vaillant's narrative about Amur tigers and the people who live with them in the remote village of Sobolonye, Russia is compelling enough that you'll start looking suspiciously at your cat by the time you're a quarter of the way through. But although the narrative is brilliant, and possibly the star of the book, the book is far more than just narrative, as Vaillant paints a fully-realized portrait not only of the tiger, but of post-communist Russia and the people who live there.
Vaillant also happens to be a crack stylist:
"When the tiger met Markov, he would have been in full arctic mode: thickly furred in a way that his southern counterparts would never be, he was insulated by a dense, wooly undercoat laid over with long, luxuriant guard hairs. From certain angles, he appeared as bushy as a lynx. His tail was a furry python as thick as a man's arm. This was the winter tiger: not the svelte, languorous creatures of long grass and jungle pools, but the heavy-limbed sovereign of mountains, snow, and moonlight, resplendent and huge in his cool blue solitude."
I loved this book so much it's almost absurd.
March 4, 2012
A tiger goes man-eater and terrorizes a remote Siberian village. Can Yuri Trush and his men end the tiger's bloody reign of terror or join its long list of victims?
It sounds like the teaser for a trashy thriller but this story really happened. The Tiger is the story of a rogue tiger and it's man-eating ways.
My description of The Tiger makes it sound like the book is one long tiger hunt but it's so much more than that. The tiger hunt piece is almost an adventure yarn but for me, the best parts of the book were the tangents about tiger hunting and life in Siberia in general. Trush only made 400 bucks a month and it was considered good wages?
I've concluded that life in Siberia resembles a polar post-apocalypse, like if Mad Max ever traveled to Alaska. The denizens of the Siberian taiga have the among the hardest of lives. Imagine using a spear for a backup weapon when hunting in this day and age? Throw a man-eating tiger into the mix and it seems like hell on earth to me.
The final fight with the tiger is pretty tense, especially considering it probably took less than a few minutes. I liked the epilogue, most notably the fact that many of the people in Trush's region think he has the taint of the tiger on him now and won't sleep under the same roof.
The tiger in this book was much less mellow than this tiger I saw at the Saint Louis Zoo, pain-maddened by an encounter with a human poacher.
[image error]
Vaillant's writing style made me forget I was reading non-fiction most of the time. It's very engaging. The only observation I want to make about it is that he jumps around quite a bit. I like that he devoted a lot of time to some of the tiger's victims but it may have been too much. Other than that, I have no complaints.
It sounds like the teaser for a trashy thriller but this story really happened. The Tiger is the story of a rogue tiger and it's man-eating ways.
My description of The Tiger makes it sound like the book is one long tiger hunt but it's so much more than that. The tiger hunt piece is almost an adventure yarn but for me, the best parts of the book were the tangents about tiger hunting and life in Siberia in general. Trush only made 400 bucks a month and it was considered good wages?
I've concluded that life in Siberia resembles a polar post-apocalypse, like if Mad Max ever traveled to Alaska. The denizens of the Siberian taiga have the among the hardest of lives. Imagine using a spear for a backup weapon when hunting in this day and age? Throw a man-eating tiger into the mix and it seems like hell on earth to me.
The final fight with the tiger is pretty tense, especially considering it probably took less than a few minutes. I liked the epilogue, most notably the fact that many of the people in Trush's region think he has the taint of the tiger on him now and won't sleep under the same roof.
The tiger in this book was much less mellow than this tiger I saw at the Saint Louis Zoo, pain-maddened by an encounter with a human poacher.
[image error]
Vaillant's writing style made me forget I was reading non-fiction most of the time. It's very engaging. The only observation I want to make about it is that he jumps around quite a bit. I like that he devoted a lot of time to some of the tiger's victims but it may have been too much. Other than that, I have no complaints.
November 1, 2010
Sigh, yet another popular book of narrative nonfiction that takes what is essentially a topic for a good magazine essay and blows it up to book length with all kinds of digressive excursions into anything remotely relating the main story. Basically, in 1997, a tiger killed a hunter in the Russian Far East, leading to a tiger-hunt. This takes about fifty pages to detail (and I do mean detail), leaving another 250 to be filled with all kinds of material, such as the history of the region (which is pretty interesting), the ecology of the region (less interesting), indigenous beliefs in the region (not so interesting), the effects of perestroika on the region (predictable), the anatomy and zoology of various kinds of tigers (dry), and a whole lot of stuff concerning the relations between humans and animals. There was nothing particularly badly written about any of this, it's just that I kept feeling like most of it was extraneous and there to stretch the page count, rather than support the main story. Even the parts directly relating to the tiger and the hunt for it spent an awful lot of time delving into the life stories of everyone involved, not to mention huge amounts of speculation concerning their inner thoughts (including that of the tiger). Which is not so say that the conclusions the author draws don't seem reasonable, but at the end of the day one has to wonder whether the story of a tiger that killed two people is really worth the amount of effort clearly spent here.
June 4, 2022
A Vingança do Tigre
Se há livros que nos fazem aterrar em locais longínquos, daqueles que transcendem a mais profusa das imaginações, O Tigre é um deles.
Porém, devo advertir-vos que não estamos perante uma leitura compulsiva, pois os fragmentos de thriller real (a caça ao tigre "fora da lei") alternam com informações quer sobre o tigre siberiano, quer sobre a região (Primorye) e população local.
Não obstante, trata-se duma leitura peculiar e cativante, como espero comprovar nesta resenha:
Sobre o tigre siberiano ficamos a saber que é um animal imponente (chega a pesar 500 kg e medir 9 m de comprimento), dotado duma força descomunal e duma paciência infinita sempre que o objectivo é matar (chega a esperar 48 horas pelas suas presas)
Quanto a Primorye , situa-se algures na fronteira Rússia-China. É uma zona agreste, com temperaturas de muitos graus negativos e onde os poucos habitantes coexistem com algumas centenas de tigres num pacto de paz mudo (não me chateies, não te chateio).
É ponto de encontro de 4 bio-regiões que incluem a floresta subtropical e a taiga Siberiana. Sendo uma região predominantemente inóspita, também lhe encontramos paisagens exóticas duma beleza ímpar, cujas magníficas descrições nos cortam a respiração!...
Esta história conta-nos que um belo dia, um desses possantes felinos, transgride o pacto de paz Homem-Tigre, ao devorar um habitante da região. Sendo tal pacto de cariz intemporal, o caso pedia investigação mandatória!
Foi basicamente com estes ingredientes, que nasceu uma história extraordinariamente real e envolvente:
"Pendurada nas árvores, como se enredada nelas, está a foice da lua. A sua luz pálida espalha sombras na neve por baixo, tornando ainda mais escura a floresta que este homem atravessa agora guiando‐se tanto pelo tato como pela vista. Vai a pé e sozinho, só na companhia de um cão, que corre à frente, encantado por estarem por fim a dirigir‐se para casa.
Dentro de pouco tempo, haverá chá quente e um cigarro, seguido por arroz e carne e mais cigarros. Talvez um gole ou dois de vodca, se ainda houver alguma. Mas então, quando os ângulos familiares tomam forma na clareira, o cão colide com um cheiro como se ele fosse um muro e estaca, a rosnar. Eles são companheiros de caça e o homem compreende: está lá alguém junto à cabana. O pelo das costas do cão e os pelos do pescoço do homem eriçam‐se ao mesmo tempo.
Juntos, ouvem um estrondo no escuro, que parece vir de todos os lados ao mesmo tempo..."
O Tigre é uma leitura especialmente destinada a quem gosta de viajar, conhecer outras culturas e diferentes formas de vivência e sobrevivência.
Para terminar, não resisto a deixar aqui uma piada transmitida pela Rádio Arménia, uma estação de rádio da época, que funcionava segundo o lema:
"Pergunte-nos o que quiser, nós responderemos o que quisermos"
e cujo humor tinha múltiplas vezes como alvo o regime soviético:
Esta é a Rádio Arménia. Os nossos ouvintes perguntaram-nos:
- Porque é que o nosso governo não está com pressa de pôr os nossos homens na lua?
Nós respondemos:
- E se eles se recusam a voltar? 😜
Se há livros que nos fazem aterrar em locais longínquos, daqueles que transcendem a mais profusa das imaginações, O Tigre é um deles.
Porém, devo advertir-vos que não estamos perante uma leitura compulsiva, pois os fragmentos de thriller real (a caça ao tigre "fora da lei") alternam com informações quer sobre o tigre siberiano, quer sobre a região (Primorye) e população local.
Não obstante, trata-se duma leitura peculiar e cativante, como espero comprovar nesta resenha:
Sobre o tigre siberiano ficamos a saber que é um animal imponente (chega a pesar 500 kg e medir 9 m de comprimento), dotado duma força descomunal e duma paciência infinita sempre que o objectivo é matar (chega a esperar 48 horas pelas suas presas)
Quanto a Primorye , situa-se algures na fronteira Rússia-China. É uma zona agreste, com temperaturas de muitos graus negativos e onde os poucos habitantes coexistem com algumas centenas de tigres num pacto de paz mudo (não me chateies, não te chateio).
É ponto de encontro de 4 bio-regiões que incluem a floresta subtropical e a taiga Siberiana. Sendo uma região predominantemente inóspita, também lhe encontramos paisagens exóticas duma beleza ímpar, cujas magníficas descrições nos cortam a respiração!...
Esta história conta-nos que um belo dia, um desses possantes felinos, transgride o pacto de paz Homem-Tigre, ao devorar um habitante da região. Sendo tal pacto de cariz intemporal, o caso pedia investigação mandatória!
Foi basicamente com estes ingredientes, que nasceu uma história extraordinariamente real e envolvente:
"Pendurada nas árvores, como se enredada nelas, está a foice da lua. A sua luz pálida espalha sombras na neve por baixo, tornando ainda mais escura a floresta que este homem atravessa agora guiando‐se tanto pelo tato como pela vista. Vai a pé e sozinho, só na companhia de um cão, que corre à frente, encantado por estarem por fim a dirigir‐se para casa.
Dentro de pouco tempo, haverá chá quente e um cigarro, seguido por arroz e carne e mais cigarros. Talvez um gole ou dois de vodca, se ainda houver alguma. Mas então, quando os ângulos familiares tomam forma na clareira, o cão colide com um cheiro como se ele fosse um muro e estaca, a rosnar. Eles são companheiros de caça e o homem compreende: está lá alguém junto à cabana. O pelo das costas do cão e os pelos do pescoço do homem eriçam‐se ao mesmo tempo.
Juntos, ouvem um estrondo no escuro, que parece vir de todos os lados ao mesmo tempo..."
O Tigre é uma leitura especialmente destinada a quem gosta de viajar, conhecer outras culturas e diferentes formas de vivência e sobrevivência.
Para terminar, não resisto a deixar aqui uma piada transmitida pela Rádio Arménia, uma estação de rádio da época, que funcionava segundo o lema:
"Pergunte-nos o que quiser, nós responderemos o que quisermos"
e cujo humor tinha múltiplas vezes como alvo o regime soviético:
Esta é a Rádio Arménia. Os nossos ouvintes perguntaram-nos:
- Porque é que o nosso governo não está com pressa de pôr os nossos homens na lua?
Nós respondemos:
- E se eles se recusam a voltar? 😜
October 9, 2022
The Siberian Tiger - a misnomer, and the Amur Tiger would better describe its location. Primarily the Primorye region of far eastern Russia, a vast area which shares a very long border with Chinese Manchuria and a short border with North Korea.
This book tells the story of one Amur Tiger - one who turns maneater, one with a vengeful attitude.
This story could be told in about 50 pages, if told in a constant stream, and sticking to the events in question - but that is not what this book does. This book takes the story and spreads it thinly throughout the whole 300 pages, keeping the reader on tenterhooks, waiting for the next step. Mixed through the story is an eclectic collection of sidelines, backfills and speculations related to the many people involved in this story, this area of Russia, its history, Russian policy, and of course, tigers.
I enjoyed the supplementary information - for me it was all relevant enough, and interesting enough. It contained loads of interesting information specific to tigers, but was a also a little broader, bringing in similarities and differences between tigers and other animals - wolves, the Amur leopard, brown bears. There was a lot of specialist research on Amur tigers explained. There was also a lot about the people involved - very detailed biographies of, in some cases, their entire lives. This included the victims of the tiger, their families, other relevant people living in the same towns and the tiger hunting team members. This all added to the greater context, but was perhaps the one aspect that was taken a but far for me. Having said all that, I know other readers found there was too little of the story and too much of the context.
The story of the Amur tiger, its dwindling numbers at the hands of poachers and hunters (ethnic and indigenous Russians) who see them as competition is a sad one, which it appears will not end well. The long, easily penetrated border with China, the recent deforestation by loggers, the logging roads that make access much easier, and the demand for all parts of the tiger by Chinese smugglers with plenty of cash all see the Amur tiger heading the same way as other tiger subspecies that have gone extinct in recent memory - the Balinese, Javan and Caspian. Add to this the South China tiger which has not had a reliable sighting since 1990 (according to the book) and is now likely to be gone too.
Vaillant describes Chinese Manchuria as historically being 'an ocean of trees', and a protective belt for wild animals in the taiga over the border. Now it is devoid of trees -every inch of arable land being utilised, where 'seeing a magpie is an event'. Meanwhile the Chinese have taken to breeding tigers purely to provide for the demand for Chinese medicine - dressed up as a rehabilitation park aiming to release them to the wild - which of course never happens.
I won't share the outline of the story - other reviewers have done this, but I would recommend letting the book roll the story out for you, the suspense as it is teased out makes it all worthwhile.
4 stars
This book tells the story of one Amur Tiger - one who turns maneater, one with a vengeful attitude.
This story could be told in about 50 pages, if told in a constant stream, and sticking to the events in question - but that is not what this book does. This book takes the story and spreads it thinly throughout the whole 300 pages, keeping the reader on tenterhooks, waiting for the next step. Mixed through the story is an eclectic collection of sidelines, backfills and speculations related to the many people involved in this story, this area of Russia, its history, Russian policy, and of course, tigers.
I enjoyed the supplementary information - for me it was all relevant enough, and interesting enough. It contained loads of interesting information specific to tigers, but was a also a little broader, bringing in similarities and differences between tigers and other animals - wolves, the Amur leopard, brown bears. There was a lot of specialist research on Amur tigers explained. There was also a lot about the people involved - very detailed biographies of, in some cases, their entire lives. This included the victims of the tiger, their families, other relevant people living in the same towns and the tiger hunting team members. This all added to the greater context, but was perhaps the one aspect that was taken a but far for me. Having said all that, I know other readers found there was too little of the story and too much of the context.
The story of the Amur tiger, its dwindling numbers at the hands of poachers and hunters (ethnic and indigenous Russians) who see them as competition is a sad one, which it appears will not end well. The long, easily penetrated border with China, the recent deforestation by loggers, the logging roads that make access much easier, and the demand for all parts of the tiger by Chinese smugglers with plenty of cash all see the Amur tiger heading the same way as other tiger subspecies that have gone extinct in recent memory - the Balinese, Javan and Caspian. Add to this the South China tiger which has not had a reliable sighting since 1990 (according to the book) and is now likely to be gone too.
Vaillant describes Chinese Manchuria as historically being 'an ocean of trees', and a protective belt for wild animals in the taiga over the border. Now it is devoid of trees -every inch of arable land being utilised, where 'seeing a magpie is an event'. Meanwhile the Chinese have taken to breeding tigers purely to provide for the demand for Chinese medicine - dressed up as a rehabilitation park aiming to release them to the wild - which of course never happens.
I won't share the outline of the story - other reviewers have done this, but I would recommend letting the book roll the story out for you, the suspense as it is teased out makes it all worthwhile.
4 stars
November 12, 2012
Like the beast this book is about, The Tiger is patient. It stalks ahead with care and diligence as it learns about its prey, and each step forward the tension builds until the target is reached and then it pounces with devastating fury.
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant sounds like over-the-top macho stuff that should be avoided. Thankfully it is not. Instead it's a study of sociology, zoology, botany, history, geography, and the socio-economic climate of the far east Russian wilderness. It is the story of desperate poachers and the authorities trying to convict and protect them. And for excitement's sake, it is most importantly about a group of men tracking a man-eating tiger.
Vaillant writes great descriptions of the Amur Tiger protective agents with succinct and poignant details. He was also able to build the locally legendary characters of the area's poachers, even the ones who became the tiger's prey. With forensic evidence, post-mortums of the many hunts and subsequently successful kills by the tiger of man or animal were fully enacted in engrossing action that'll put the chills up your spine. A reminder/warning though: this is not a thrill-a-minute action novel. This is a balanced non-fiction. Be prepared to spend some time, for instance, learning about Russia's Perestroika movement in the 80s or relating the detrimental buffalo slayings of the old American West to the big game hunting that nearly wiped out the tigers of Russia's Taiga. So just beware, you might learn something.
Rating note: I was tempted to give it a 5 star rating, but the extra star would've been purely subjective. I don't think this is a 5 star book. It was just a really good book for me and my tastes.
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant sounds like over-the-top macho stuff that should be avoided. Thankfully it is not. Instead it's a study of sociology, zoology, botany, history, geography, and the socio-economic climate of the far east Russian wilderness. It is the story of desperate poachers and the authorities trying to convict and protect them. And for excitement's sake, it is most importantly about a group of men tracking a man-eating tiger.
Vaillant writes great descriptions of the Amur Tiger protective agents with succinct and poignant details. He was also able to build the locally legendary characters of the area's poachers, even the ones who became the tiger's prey. With forensic evidence, post-mortums of the many hunts and subsequently successful kills by the tiger of man or animal were fully enacted in engrossing action that'll put the chills up your spine. A reminder/warning though: this is not a thrill-a-minute action novel. This is a balanced non-fiction. Be prepared to spend some time, for instance, learning about Russia's Perestroika movement in the 80s or relating the detrimental buffalo slayings of the old American West to the big game hunting that nearly wiped out the tigers of Russia's Taiga. So just beware, you might learn something.
Rating note: I was tempted to give it a 5 star rating, but the extra star would've been purely subjective. I don't think this is a 5 star book. It was just a really good book for me and my tastes.
June 20, 2017
Were This Standard Nonfiction, Such Would be My Addiction
SIBERIAN MAN-EATER and ITS SYMBOLISM for RUSSIA
The wonders you can find in the giant, bountiful gardens of literature never cease to amaze. One need only look widely enough and take a chance and she might be put in the Siberian taiga (the sometimes swampy coniferous forest of high northern latitudes) in far eastern Russia as the locals encounter a looming Amur tiger a/k/a Siberian tiger, an otherworldly animal in all its magnificence, a ne plus ultra combination of beauty and size and ferocity, growing up to ten feet in length from head to hind and nearly seven-hundred pounds. This Siberian seems intent on exacting revenge for being shot, having already eaten two men in separate incidents over several days.
In the course of this account, Mr. Vaillant colors the local characters and the poverty in the Primorski province of the Russian Far East, and makes one contemplate who is more danger to man (Panthera tigris altaica or Hominis corrupti regimen).
Absolutely brilliant nonfiction.
SIBERIAN MAN-EATER and ITS SYMBOLISM for RUSSIA
The wonders you can find in the giant, bountiful gardens of literature never cease to amaze. One need only look widely enough and take a chance and she might be put in the Siberian taiga (the sometimes swampy coniferous forest of high northern latitudes) in far eastern Russia as the locals encounter a looming Amur tiger a/k/a Siberian tiger, an otherworldly animal in all its magnificence, a ne plus ultra combination of beauty and size and ferocity, growing up to ten feet in length from head to hind and nearly seven-hundred pounds. This Siberian seems intent on exacting revenge for being shot, having already eaten two men in separate incidents over several days.
In the course of this account, Mr. Vaillant colors the local characters and the poverty in the Primorski province of the Russian Far East, and makes one contemplate who is more danger to man (Panthera tigris altaica or Hominis corrupti regimen).
Absolutely brilliant nonfiction.
September 13, 2020
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant
This is a book that can broaden your perspective of not only tigers, but also human proclivities and the paradoxes of evolving Russian life.
With exceptional skill the writer weaves a spellbinding account with the thread of hunter and hunted, alternating roles between Amur tiger and man throughout, the detail of the telling magnetic. It's a veritable adventure/thriller/horror book. That is only the binding of the book though. What I found equally immersing was the extensive augmenting material. Such being the relative effects of Russian history from Lenin through perestroika, China's benighted potions market, tiger history and interactions, constructive and aggravating human activities, individual histories and mindsets, topography of the Primorye region, indeed most anything relevant.
There are also a good many individuals involved, enough so that some I had to search back through the text to reacquaint myself with. A characters reference in the back matter, like I included in my own book, would have been helpful.
Any drawback to this remarkable literary achievement lies paradoxically with the extensive augmenting material. Readers along for only the joyride may find the book wearing, not understanding that like narrow-minded perspectives are at the root of humankind's problems.
As the story begins:
“When Trush and his men climbed down from the Kung [a military vehicle], they heard the crows’ raucous kvetching concentrated just west of the entrance road. Trush noted the way their dark bodies swirled and flickered above the trees and, even if he hadn’t been warned ahead of time, this would have told him all he needed to know: something big was dead, or dying, and it was being guarded.”
“The camera doesn’t waver as it pans across the pink and trampled snow, taking in the hind foot of a dog, a single glove, and then a bloodstained jacket cuff before halting at a patch of bare ground about a hundred yards into the forest. At this point the audio picks up a sudden, retching gasp. It is as if he has entered Grendel’s den.”
In investigating the first attack:
“Some in the village felt sure he had invited his own death by robbing the tiger of its kill. 'It became a bit of a joke,' said one local resident, 'that he brought that meat to his own funeral.' Regardless of their other feelings about tigers, the residents of Sobolonye had great respect for the tiger's intelligence and hunting prowess, and the idea that these powers might be directed against them—at random—was terrifying. This tiger’s presence had cast a pall over the village”
At another incident in a different setting:
“Whatever it was made the tiger change direction, and he stalked this new information with a single-minded intensity that would have been chilling to behold.
. . .
“What Alexander Pochepnya found is something no parent is equipped to see. Fifty yards into the snowy forest lay a heap of blood-blackened clothing in a circle of exposed earth. It looked more like a case of spontaneous combustion than an animal attack. There was nothing left but shredded cloth and empty boots.”
To understand and appreciate:
“It is only in the past two hundred years—out of two million—that humans have seriously contested the tiger’s claim to the forest and all it contains. As adaptable as tigers are, they have not evolved to accommodate this latest change in their environment, and this lack of flexibility, when combined with armed, entitled humans and domestic animals, is a recipe for disaster.”
Along with what drives much of the illegal trade in tiger-based supplements. The brandname Viagra is derived from vyaaghra, the Sanskrit word for tiger. Hormones control our thinking.
It isn't surprising that the reflections pertaining to the tiger's umwelt herein are in general accordance with those expressed in the book "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" by Frans de Waal, even those in the book "The Elephant Whisperer" by Lawrence Anthony, and no doubt others. We are all cut from the same cloth, and the ‘all too human’ behavior of man is ‘all too animal.’
“In hunting societies, such as the Udeghe, the !Kung, the Haida, or the Sioux, animals were not merely food, they were seen as blood relatives, spiritual companions, hunting guides, and sources of power and connection to the surrounding world. The boundaries between the umwelten of humans and animals were, of necessity, much less rigidly defined.”
The augmenting material is every bit as interesting. For example there is this about Russia's far Eastern wilderness known as the Taiga:
“Primorye’s bizarre assemblage of flora and fauna leaves one with the impression that Noah’s ark had only recently made landfall, and that, rather than dispersing to their proper places around the globe, many of its passengers had simply decided to stay, including some we never knew existed. Within this waterbound envelope live unclassifiable species like the raccoon dog, as well as a bizarre tropical canid called a dhole that hunts in packs, and has been reputed to attack humans and tigers, along with more traditional prey. Here, too, can be found red-legged ibis, paradise flycatchers, and parrotlike reed sutoras, along with five species of eagle, nine species of bat, and more than forty kinds of fern. In the spring, improbable moths and butterflies like the Artemis Emperor, the Exclusive Underwing, and the as-yet unstudied Pseudopsychic hatch out to spangle and iridesce by the roadsides. In the dead of winter, giant ladybugs with reverse color schemes cruise the walls of village kitchens like animated wallpaper. This Boreal Jungle (for lack of a better term) is unique on earth, and it nurtures the greatest biodiversity of any place in Russia, the largest country in the world. It is over this surreal menagerie that the Amur tiger reigns supreme.”
“Of the six surviving subspecies of tiger, the Amur is the only one habituated to arctic conditions. In addition to having a larger skull than other subspecies, it carries more fat and a heavier coat, and these give it a rugged, primitive burliness that is missing from its sleeker tropical cousins. The thickly maned head can be as broad as a man’s chest and shoulders, and winter paw prints are described using hats and pot lids for comparison.”
“... there is no creature in the taiga that is off limits to the tiger; it alone can mete out death at will. Amur tigers have been known to eat everything from salmon and ducks to adult brown bears [Kamchatka brown bears twelve to fourteen hundred pounds, larger than Alaskan Kodiak bears]. There are few wolves in Primorye, not because the environment doesn’t suit them, but because the tigers eat them, too. The Amur tiger, it could be said, takes a Stalinist approach to competition. It is also an extraordinarily versatile predator, able to survive in temperatures ranging from fifty below zero Fahrenheit to one hundred above, and to turn virtually any environment to its advantage.”
“Within every major ecosystem nature has produced, she has evolved a singularly formidable predator to rule over it. In Primorye, the Amur tiger is the latest, most exquisitely lethal manifestation of this creative impulse.”
“By regularly bringing down large prey like elk, moose, boar, and deer, the tiger feeds countless smaller animals, birds, and insects, not to mention the soil. Every such event sends another pulse of lifeblood through the body of the forest."
Regarding Russian history in understanding human impact, you will see the conflicts and contradictions of heavy handed human ecosystem destruction hand in hand with conservation measures. A battle in itself with our blind weedy species weighing ever more on one end of the teeter-totter.
“The Great Patriotic War had scarcely concluded before the USSR began rebuilding and retooling for the Cold War. While Soviet engineers and scientists perfected the now ubiquitous AK-47 and tested the country’s first nuclear weapons, the general population reeled from the catastrophic synergy generated by six years of war and the seemingly endless nightmare of Stalin’s psychotic reign. During the two decades prior to Markov’s birth, the Soviet Union lost approximately 35 million citizens—more than one fifth of its population—to manufactured famines, political repression, genocide, and war. Millions more were imprisoned, exiled, or forced to relocate, en masse, across vast distances. With the possible exception of China under Mao Zedong, it is hard to imagine how the fabric of a country could have been more thoroughly shredded from within and without.”
“There is a famous quote: “You can’t understand Russia with your mind,” and the zapovednik is a case in point. In spite of the contemptuous attitude the Soviets had toward nature, they also allowed for some of the most stringent conservation practices in the world. A zapovednik is a wildlife refuge into which no one but guards and scientists are allowed—period. The only exceptions are guests—typically fellow scientists—with written permission from the zapovednik’s director. There are scores of these reserves scattered across Russia, ranging in size from more than sixteen thousand square miles down to a dozen square miles.”
With such a wealth of information in this book, the reader will also come across such as:
Hunting for prime specimens of a species can also morphologically, at a minimum, affect a species in reducing the gene pool. An example is the anthropogenic selection the moose of eastern North America went through. Sport hunters wanting bull moose with the largest antlers, such were systematically removed from the gene pool while the smaller-antlered bulls were left to pass on their more modest genes, year after year.
In the end I found this a sorrowful story, our narrow minded weedy species at loggerheads with a magnificent specimen of Nature's life-fueled-by-life closed loop continuum of physical life. Not all of us of course, but those that through greed and/or ignorance of the Amur tiger's keystone role in balancing fundamental biodiversity caused this individual's transformation to a man-eater. But, yet all of us in expanding our deadly role of crowding out the biodiversity that is essential to our own existence. Seen in the larger picture of all creatures affecting and changing their habitat which spurs ongoing evolution in adapting new physical life forms this incident may be minor, but telling of the ever accelerating pace of our own undoing.
This is a book that can broaden your perspective of not only tigers, but also human proclivities and the paradoxes of evolving Russian life.
With exceptional skill the writer weaves a spellbinding account with the thread of hunter and hunted, alternating roles between Amur tiger and man throughout, the detail of the telling magnetic. It's a veritable adventure/thriller/horror book. That is only the binding of the book though. What I found equally immersing was the extensive augmenting material. Such being the relative effects of Russian history from Lenin through perestroika, China's benighted potions market, tiger history and interactions, constructive and aggravating human activities, individual histories and mindsets, topography of the Primorye region, indeed most anything relevant.
There are also a good many individuals involved, enough so that some I had to search back through the text to reacquaint myself with. A characters reference in the back matter, like I included in my own book, would have been helpful.
Any drawback to this remarkable literary achievement lies paradoxically with the extensive augmenting material. Readers along for only the joyride may find the book wearing, not understanding that like narrow-minded perspectives are at the root of humankind's problems.
As the story begins:
“When Trush and his men climbed down from the Kung [a military vehicle], they heard the crows’ raucous kvetching concentrated just west of the entrance road. Trush noted the way their dark bodies swirled and flickered above the trees and, even if he hadn’t been warned ahead of time, this would have told him all he needed to know: something big was dead, or dying, and it was being guarded.”
“The camera doesn’t waver as it pans across the pink and trampled snow, taking in the hind foot of a dog, a single glove, and then a bloodstained jacket cuff before halting at a patch of bare ground about a hundred yards into the forest. At this point the audio picks up a sudden, retching gasp. It is as if he has entered Grendel’s den.”
In investigating the first attack:
“Some in the village felt sure he had invited his own death by robbing the tiger of its kill. 'It became a bit of a joke,' said one local resident, 'that he brought that meat to his own funeral.' Regardless of their other feelings about tigers, the residents of Sobolonye had great respect for the tiger's intelligence and hunting prowess, and the idea that these powers might be directed against them—at random—was terrifying. This tiger’s presence had cast a pall over the village”
At another incident in a different setting:
“Whatever it was made the tiger change direction, and he stalked this new information with a single-minded intensity that would have been chilling to behold.
. . .
“What Alexander Pochepnya found is something no parent is equipped to see. Fifty yards into the snowy forest lay a heap of blood-blackened clothing in a circle of exposed earth. It looked more like a case of spontaneous combustion than an animal attack. There was nothing left but shredded cloth and empty boots.”
To understand and appreciate:
“It is only in the past two hundred years—out of two million—that humans have seriously contested the tiger’s claim to the forest and all it contains. As adaptable as tigers are, they have not evolved to accommodate this latest change in their environment, and this lack of flexibility, when combined with armed, entitled humans and domestic animals, is a recipe for disaster.”
Along with what drives much of the illegal trade in tiger-based supplements. The brandname Viagra is derived from vyaaghra, the Sanskrit word for tiger. Hormones control our thinking.
It isn't surprising that the reflections pertaining to the tiger's umwelt herein are in general accordance with those expressed in the book "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" by Frans de Waal, even those in the book "The Elephant Whisperer" by Lawrence Anthony, and no doubt others. We are all cut from the same cloth, and the ‘all too human’ behavior of man is ‘all too animal.’
“In hunting societies, such as the Udeghe, the !Kung, the Haida, or the Sioux, animals were not merely food, they were seen as blood relatives, spiritual companions, hunting guides, and sources of power and connection to the surrounding world. The boundaries between the umwelten of humans and animals were, of necessity, much less rigidly defined.”
The augmenting material is every bit as interesting. For example there is this about Russia's far Eastern wilderness known as the Taiga:
“Primorye’s bizarre assemblage of flora and fauna leaves one with the impression that Noah’s ark had only recently made landfall, and that, rather than dispersing to their proper places around the globe, many of its passengers had simply decided to stay, including some we never knew existed. Within this waterbound envelope live unclassifiable species like the raccoon dog, as well as a bizarre tropical canid called a dhole that hunts in packs, and has been reputed to attack humans and tigers, along with more traditional prey. Here, too, can be found red-legged ibis, paradise flycatchers, and parrotlike reed sutoras, along with five species of eagle, nine species of bat, and more than forty kinds of fern. In the spring, improbable moths and butterflies like the Artemis Emperor, the Exclusive Underwing, and the as-yet unstudied Pseudopsychic hatch out to spangle and iridesce by the roadsides. In the dead of winter, giant ladybugs with reverse color schemes cruise the walls of village kitchens like animated wallpaper. This Boreal Jungle (for lack of a better term) is unique on earth, and it nurtures the greatest biodiversity of any place in Russia, the largest country in the world. It is over this surreal menagerie that the Amur tiger reigns supreme.”
“Of the six surviving subspecies of tiger, the Amur is the only one habituated to arctic conditions. In addition to having a larger skull than other subspecies, it carries more fat and a heavier coat, and these give it a rugged, primitive burliness that is missing from its sleeker tropical cousins. The thickly maned head can be as broad as a man’s chest and shoulders, and winter paw prints are described using hats and pot lids for comparison.”
“... there is no creature in the taiga that is off limits to the tiger; it alone can mete out death at will. Amur tigers have been known to eat everything from salmon and ducks to adult brown bears [Kamchatka brown bears twelve to fourteen hundred pounds, larger than Alaskan Kodiak bears]. There are few wolves in Primorye, not because the environment doesn’t suit them, but because the tigers eat them, too. The Amur tiger, it could be said, takes a Stalinist approach to competition. It is also an extraordinarily versatile predator, able to survive in temperatures ranging from fifty below zero Fahrenheit to one hundred above, and to turn virtually any environment to its advantage.”
“Within every major ecosystem nature has produced, she has evolved a singularly formidable predator to rule over it. In Primorye, the Amur tiger is the latest, most exquisitely lethal manifestation of this creative impulse.”
“By regularly bringing down large prey like elk, moose, boar, and deer, the tiger feeds countless smaller animals, birds, and insects, not to mention the soil. Every such event sends another pulse of lifeblood through the body of the forest."
Regarding Russian history in understanding human impact, you will see the conflicts and contradictions of heavy handed human ecosystem destruction hand in hand with conservation measures. A battle in itself with our blind weedy species weighing ever more on one end of the teeter-totter.
“The Great Patriotic War had scarcely concluded before the USSR began rebuilding and retooling for the Cold War. While Soviet engineers and scientists perfected the now ubiquitous AK-47 and tested the country’s first nuclear weapons, the general population reeled from the catastrophic synergy generated by six years of war and the seemingly endless nightmare of Stalin’s psychotic reign. During the two decades prior to Markov’s birth, the Soviet Union lost approximately 35 million citizens—more than one fifth of its population—to manufactured famines, political repression, genocide, and war. Millions more were imprisoned, exiled, or forced to relocate, en masse, across vast distances. With the possible exception of China under Mao Zedong, it is hard to imagine how the fabric of a country could have been more thoroughly shredded from within and without.”
“There is a famous quote: “You can’t understand Russia with your mind,” and the zapovednik is a case in point. In spite of the contemptuous attitude the Soviets had toward nature, they also allowed for some of the most stringent conservation practices in the world. A zapovednik is a wildlife refuge into which no one but guards and scientists are allowed—period. The only exceptions are guests—typically fellow scientists—with written permission from the zapovednik’s director. There are scores of these reserves scattered across Russia, ranging in size from more than sixteen thousand square miles down to a dozen square miles.”
With such a wealth of information in this book, the reader will also come across such as:
Hunting for prime specimens of a species can also morphologically, at a minimum, affect a species in reducing the gene pool. An example is the anthropogenic selection the moose of eastern North America went through. Sport hunters wanting bull moose with the largest antlers, such were systematically removed from the gene pool while the smaller-antlered bulls were left to pass on their more modest genes, year after year.
In the end I found this a sorrowful story, our narrow minded weedy species at loggerheads with a magnificent specimen of Nature's life-fueled-by-life closed loop continuum of physical life. Not all of us of course, but those that through greed and/or ignorance of the Amur tiger's keystone role in balancing fundamental biodiversity caused this individual's transformation to a man-eater. But, yet all of us in expanding our deadly role of crowding out the biodiversity that is essential to our own existence. Seen in the larger picture of all creatures affecting and changing their habitat which spurs ongoing evolution in adapting new physical life forms this incident may be minor, but telling of the ever accelerating pace of our own undoing.
June 1, 2016
It's one of those books that you get so absorbed in and you learn all of these interesting facts that you want to share with people... for instance (I just have to share!) tigers are known for their virility and their strength - and the Sanskrit word for tiger *vyagghra* was Anglicized into "viagra" for the well-known impotency medication. Interesting, right? Well, there's more to learn inside this book!
The author tries to accomplish a lot in this book, and by and large, he succeeds. At the core of the story is the investigation of a unique mauling in the remote forests in coastal Siberia in the mid-1990s. The team that is dispatched to look into the killing is very similar to a forensics team at a crime scene; they read the snow, see how the attack took place, follow the tiger's entrance and exit paths, and begin to formulate ideas based on what they find. The book focuses on this team (Inspection Tiger) and their members, as well as some of the nearby villagers. In doing so, the author's research delves into Soviet and new Russian politics, ideas towards the environment, science, and conservation, the biology and psychology of both the tigers and the humans, the wealth of myths and stories about tigers and other "monsters" throughout human history, the study of predator-prey biospheres, and the economics and black market demand for rare animals by superpowers like China. So, while the isolated incident of this one tiger on this one village is where the story starts, it is much bigger in context and ramifications.
Fascinating read - tied with Henriette Lacks as the best non-fiction of the year for me.
The author tries to accomplish a lot in this book, and by and large, he succeeds. At the core of the story is the investigation of a unique mauling in the remote forests in coastal Siberia in the mid-1990s. The team that is dispatched to look into the killing is very similar to a forensics team at a crime scene; they read the snow, see how the attack took place, follow the tiger's entrance and exit paths, and begin to formulate ideas based on what they find. The book focuses on this team (Inspection Tiger) and their members, as well as some of the nearby villagers. In doing so, the author's research delves into Soviet and new Russian politics, ideas towards the environment, science, and conservation, the biology and psychology of both the tigers and the humans, the wealth of myths and stories about tigers and other "monsters" throughout human history, the study of predator-prey biospheres, and the economics and black market demand for rare animals by superpowers like China. So, while the isolated incident of this one tiger on this one village is where the story starts, it is much bigger in context and ramifications.
Fascinating read - tied with Henriette Lacks as the best non-fiction of the year for me.
March 25, 2011
Having heard of this book on NPR, I wanted to like it, the story of a man-eating tiger that hunts the hunters hunting it. The actual story could be told in 1/2 a cd; the other 9 1/2 CDs are filled with other stories. It is an ADD romp through the authors brain. If you want a geography work that goes down many, many tangential connections to the main story, this book will interest you. It is filled with many fascinating stories loosely connected to the main yarn. I got the book the b/c I was interested in the main yarn, which as I stated previously, is actually pretty short and could be told in 20 pages probably. The author anthropomorphizes the tiger to an incredible degree. At various points he addresses given the tiger human qualities, which usually come off as pretty weak. He also spends a great time building up the tiger and how terrible they are--becomes a little hyperbolic. Again, I wanted to like this book; I even teach a geography course, but I found myself talking to the CD player asking the author to just tell the story already.
March 17, 2015
The Tiger by John Vaillant is more than a description of a hunt for a man-eating Amur tiger in a mountainous sliver of southeastern Russia that borders China, Korea, and Japan. In this book, Vaillant gives us the socio-political and environmental context of the tiger hunt, and introduces us to the lives of the men who did not survive the tiger and of those who finally chase the tiger down. The place where the tiger lived is memorably described as a mixture of “the backwoods claustrophobia of Appalachia with the frontier roughness of the Yukon.” The taiga or “forest sea” has a peculiar ecosystem where subartic and subtropic collide and collude to sustain the widest range of flora and fauna on earth.
While Vaillant must vilify the poaching, he gives us the context in which to understand it:
Many of the people living in the Primorye region nonetheless have a history of respect for tigers, the "czar" of animals and would live with them in harmony and respect. A telling story is related from an earlier time:
While Vaillant must vilify the poaching, he gives us the context in which to understand it:
During the two decades prior to Markov’s birth, the Soviet Union lost approximately 55 million citizens—more than one fifth of its population—to manufactured famines, political repression, genocide, and war. Millions more were imprisoned, exiled, or forced to relocate, en masse, across vast distances. With the possible exception of China under Mao Zedong, it is hard to imagine how the fabric of a country could have been more thoroughly shredded from within and without. pp.57-58The situation has grown more dire as the years have progressed:
Prior to the reopening of the Chinese border following Gorbachev’s rapprochement with Beijing in 1989, commercial tiger poaching was virtually unknown in Russia. Since, then, the export of Primorye’s natural resources—in all their forms and shades of legality—has exploded while local Russians have found themselves completely overmatched by the Chinese: their hustle, their business acumen, and their insatiable appetite for everything from ginseng and sea cucumbers to Amur tigers and Slavic prostitutes…In Asia today , wildlife trafficking is a multibillion-dollar industry, and roughly three quarters of all trafficked wildlife ends up in China, which has become a black hole for many endangered species. pp.222-223
Many of the people living in the Primorye region nonetheless have a history of respect for tigers, the "czar" of animals and would live with them in harmony and respect. A telling story is related from an earlier time:
Caldwell, a Methodist, soon realized that tigers were… present and eating his parishioners. And yet, much to his dismay, his parishioners seemed to venerate these beasts almost as if they were sacred cows. Armed with a carbine and the 117th Psalm, Caldwell began shooting every tiger he saw, only to find that the large striped cats he and his coolies brought out of the hills were greeted with skepticism. Elders in his village claimed they lacked certain tigerish attributes, but the subtext seemed to be that if this foreign devil had been able to kill them then they couldn’t possibly be real tigers. p. 92More than the story of a tiger hunt, this is the story of a part of the world in the midst of upheaval. It is a record of a time and place that we would not ordinarily access, and that is probably changing irreversibly.
February 1, 2019
Very cool book about a tiger on a vendetta ... seriously. True story told from the perspective of the poachers, the trackers, their families and, of course, the tiger. If you like learning about tigers in the wild, you'll probably enjoy this book.
4 Stars = Outstanding. It definitely held my interest.
4 Stars = Outstanding. It definitely held my interest.
October 28, 2018
A man eating Tiger! A true story that takes place in far east Russia. The tiger gobbled up two men in two different attacks. A real pager turner. Lots of tiger lore, russian history and suspense of the hunt included.
October 11, 2010
My mother tells a true story about her mother and a cat. My grandmother had accidently stepped on the cat. The cat took umbrage. The cat hidden, waited, and then attacked my grandmother's feet.
House cats know about revenge and vengeance.
House cats wish they were as big as tigers. (At least my cats do, or seem to, when there are three dogs, not just the one dog, in the house).
Second bit of true infromation. Tigers are missing what is the tiger version of the collarbone. This allows them to jump really far. An Indian tiger can gain the height of a Asian Elephant quite easily.
Tigers are the most awesome cats on the face of the earth.
I never, ever want to meet one in the wild unless I'm in a very sturdy car.
Vaillant's book is in part true life animal story, part love poem to the dangerous cat in the world. On one level, Vaillant presents the natural history of the tiger. On the next level, Vaillant discusses the history of tiger resuce and Russia's far East. On the last level, Vaillant tells the story of a tiger's search for vengeance.
Be warned. You might chew your lip to pieces reading this book.
The tiger of the title is an Amur Tiger (Siberian Tiger) who kills humans after a violent debate over food rights (or dogs). To Vaillant's credit, he makes the victims human, in other word, they are more than poaches who desire what they had coming to them. In the process, Vaillant also makes a very strong case and plea for why these animals should be protected. He also illustrates the problems facing the Far East of Russia and paints a vivid potrait of life there.
The book is a hunter's story, along the lines of the search for Lobo the Wolf in the American West. It is very similar in tone and respect. Additionally, the book is full of facts about tigers (who can jump from the water like dolphins, who kill bears on princple, and who sound surprising human), facts about Russia, and about animal biolgoy.
It is well worth a read.
I wish I could give it 6 stars.
House cats know about revenge and vengeance.
House cats wish they were as big as tigers. (At least my cats do, or seem to, when there are three dogs, not just the one dog, in the house).
Second bit of true infromation. Tigers are missing what is the tiger version of the collarbone. This allows them to jump really far. An Indian tiger can gain the height of a Asian Elephant quite easily.
Tigers are the most awesome cats on the face of the earth.
I never, ever want to meet one in the wild unless I'm in a very sturdy car.
Vaillant's book is in part true life animal story, part love poem to the dangerous cat in the world. On one level, Vaillant presents the natural history of the tiger. On the next level, Vaillant discusses the history of tiger resuce and Russia's far East. On the last level, Vaillant tells the story of a tiger's search for vengeance.
Be warned. You might chew your lip to pieces reading this book.
The tiger of the title is an Amur Tiger (Siberian Tiger) who kills humans after a violent debate over food rights (or dogs). To Vaillant's credit, he makes the victims human, in other word, they are more than poaches who desire what they had coming to them. In the process, Vaillant also makes a very strong case and plea for why these animals should be protected. He also illustrates the problems facing the Far East of Russia and paints a vivid potrait of life there.
The book is a hunter's story, along the lines of the search for Lobo the Wolf in the American West. It is very similar in tone and respect. Additionally, the book is full of facts about tigers (who can jump from the water like dolphins, who kill bears on princple, and who sound surprising human), facts about Russia, and about animal biolgoy.
It is well worth a read.
I wish I could give it 6 stars.
March 17, 2015
In 1997, a tiger killed and ate a man in the far reaches of Russia's Siberia region. It did so in a methodical manner, unlike anything the people there had seen before. Soon, the tiger struck again, terrorizing a small village and then attacking another man and eating him. This was possibly not the tiger's first go around with eating humans. Determined to be a threat, the government's Inspection Tiger task force was given the responsibility to investigate and stop this tiger once and for all.
Sounds pretty promising, right? Nice little tale of terror, neatly wrapped up in a 500 word article for Outside or National Geographic, maybe with some pretty pictures and maps. Well, this book is more than that. It is panoramic in its scope, covering everything from ethnobiology to history to economics to political science to spiritualism to wildlife conservation. The author gives a vivid picture of a society unlike many others - a cold, forbidding, primal place, where man is not at the top of the food chain, and where man lives or dies on his relationship to his local environment.
Nothing feels padded here. John Vaillant has researched and done his leg work to bring not just a chilling tale of an animal gone wild, but also that tale in complete context of its existence. Everything is pieced together. Nothing is extraneous.
I'm both amused and saddened by the one star reviews this book has on Amazon. Nearly all of them are some variation that the book is not just about the hunt for the tiger. Most bemoan the inclusion of contextual data. Clearly, their brains hurt if forced to think in a non-linear fashion. A rather sad indictment of the US education system.
I was never bored with this book. The prose is beautiful to read, but not laden with excessive words or phrases. Everything is how it should be. Highly recommended.
Sounds pretty promising, right? Nice little tale of terror, neatly wrapped up in a 500 word article for Outside or National Geographic, maybe with some pretty pictures and maps. Well, this book is more than that. It is panoramic in its scope, covering everything from ethnobiology to history to economics to political science to spiritualism to wildlife conservation. The author gives a vivid picture of a society unlike many others - a cold, forbidding, primal place, where man is not at the top of the food chain, and where man lives or dies on his relationship to his local environment.
Nothing feels padded here. John Vaillant has researched and done his leg work to bring not just a chilling tale of an animal gone wild, but also that tale in complete context of its existence. Everything is pieced together. Nothing is extraneous.
I'm both amused and saddened by the one star reviews this book has on Amazon. Nearly all of them are some variation that the book is not just about the hunt for the tiger. Most bemoan the inclusion of contextual data. Clearly, their brains hurt if forced to think in a non-linear fashion. A rather sad indictment of the US education system.
I was never bored with this book. The prose is beautiful to read, but not laden with excessive words or phrases. Everything is how it should be. Highly recommended.
March 20, 2024
John Vaillant is one of my favorite authors of narrative non-fiction, and last week I was reminded that I've been sitting on his book The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival for a while. What reminded me about it was watching a Bengal tiger, from within his large enclosure, stalk a guy on a bike at our local zoo. Fortunately there were two fences between the zoo tiger and the cyclist, but it was obvious that the outcome would not have been pretty for the cyclist had there not been. I hadn't previously seen such a clear illustration of what you always hear about the inherent wildness of these creatures, regardless of their captive status. I was left a bit shaken, to say the least.
Back to the book. The tiger that Vaillant writes about is definitely NOT a captive. He's an Amur tiger, one of a relatively small remaining population in the Primorye district of far eastern Russia. Over the course of the book Vaillant recounts the circumstances under which, during a two week period, the tiger killed two men in separate instances. Not just killed, but completely eliminated, to the point where all that was left of one man was hauled out in a small bag in a man’s pocket.
As is typical with Vaillant, through his side excursions we learn about a whole lot more than this tiger, or even tigers generally. He goes into detail about the flora and fauna of Primorye and its unique environment, in which subtropical and boreal forests exist side by side. He devotes considerable space to the impact of each stage of 2oth century Russian political change on this undeveloped rural region. I was startled by the devastating effect of perestroika and then the end of the Soviet Union on this area. The state support of the logging industry, which had been virtually the only thriving element of the local economy, stopped abruptly and people’s livelihoods gradually deteriorated to practically a subsistence level. Much of what keeps them alive is the sale of poached items to wealthy Chinese buyers.
Not surprisingly, Vaillant spends a great deal of time exploring the relationship of humans and big cats from prehistory to the present. He discusses the observations of anthropologists who witnessed Neolithic cultures existing into the mid-20th century as they interacted with lions in Africa. He makes comparisons between these human/predator-cat relationships and those that have historically prevailed in Primorye, a kind of edgy peaceful coexistence based on respect.
I have to admit that as much as I typically enjoy these kinds of digressions, Vaillant may have overindulged himself this time. His point could have been just as well made with fewer examples, which would have improved the pacing of the book.
One observation on his part that I did find fascinating was the suggestion that tracking is a primitive form of written language, one that can be interpreted, on different levels, by both animals and people. Whether in the form of paw prints, broken twigs, scat, scent or other clues, these indicators tell a lot about the tracked: who, when and where, age, condition and so on. Collectively, a story.
All that aside, the heart of the book is the man-eating tiger and the efforts to find and kill him. What set him on his deadly campaign, how he was able to evade capture, the way he took advantage of aspects of human behavior to assist his strategy. Vaillant thoughtfully describes the efforts of the government sponsored "tiger team", whose primary responsibility was to protect the endangered species, but in this instance needed to prevent further disasters after the first death. This is made more difficult by the local villagers who were both terrified, but also determined to continue the forest-based activities that were their only source of income. Vaillant provides a nuanced picture of conflicts inherent in conservation efforts in an impoverished area, complicated by governmental bureaucracy.
Although I really wish that Vaillant had reined in some of his digressions, I'm giving this one 4 stars because I did relish all that I learned about the Amur tigers, the places they live, and the national and international political conflicts that have impacted their situation.
Back to the book. The tiger that Vaillant writes about is definitely NOT a captive. He's an Amur tiger, one of a relatively small remaining population in the Primorye district of far eastern Russia. Over the course of the book Vaillant recounts the circumstances under which, during a two week period, the tiger killed two men in separate instances. Not just killed, but completely eliminated, to the point where all that was left of one man was hauled out in a small bag in a man’s pocket.
As is typical with Vaillant, through his side excursions we learn about a whole lot more than this tiger, or even tigers generally. He goes into detail about the flora and fauna of Primorye and its unique environment, in which subtropical and boreal forests exist side by side. He devotes considerable space to the impact of each stage of 2oth century Russian political change on this undeveloped rural region. I was startled by the devastating effect of perestroika and then the end of the Soviet Union on this area. The state support of the logging industry, which had been virtually the only thriving element of the local economy, stopped abruptly and people’s livelihoods gradually deteriorated to practically a subsistence level. Much of what keeps them alive is the sale of poached items to wealthy Chinese buyers.
Not surprisingly, Vaillant spends a great deal of time exploring the relationship of humans and big cats from prehistory to the present. He discusses the observations of anthropologists who witnessed Neolithic cultures existing into the mid-20th century as they interacted with lions in Africa. He makes comparisons between these human/predator-cat relationships and those that have historically prevailed in Primorye, a kind of edgy peaceful coexistence based on respect.
I have to admit that as much as I typically enjoy these kinds of digressions, Vaillant may have overindulged himself this time. His point could have been just as well made with fewer examples, which would have improved the pacing of the book.
One observation on his part that I did find fascinating was the suggestion that tracking is a primitive form of written language, one that can be interpreted, on different levels, by both animals and people. Whether in the form of paw prints, broken twigs, scat, scent or other clues, these indicators tell a lot about the tracked: who, when and where, age, condition and so on. Collectively, a story.
All that aside, the heart of the book is the man-eating tiger and the efforts to find and kill him. What set him on his deadly campaign, how he was able to evade capture, the way he took advantage of aspects of human behavior to assist his strategy. Vaillant thoughtfully describes the efforts of the government sponsored "tiger team", whose primary responsibility was to protect the endangered species, but in this instance needed to prevent further disasters after the first death. This is made more difficult by the local villagers who were both terrified, but also determined to continue the forest-based activities that were their only source of income. Vaillant provides a nuanced picture of conflicts inherent in conservation efforts in an impoverished area, complicated by governmental bureaucracy.
Although I really wish that Vaillant had reined in some of his digressions, I'm giving this one 4 stars because I did relish all that I learned about the Amur tigers, the places they live, and the national and international political conflicts that have impacted their situation.
June 24, 2022
I read this as part of my Nature Literature group. What I expected was the story of the Amur or Siberian tiger that lives around Primorye, Siberia and some natural science information from that area. It did include some of that but also massive doses of Russian politics, survival in the African desert and anything else the author thought to throw in. Distractions, digressions and unnecessary length were a huge obstacle for me.
The book is ostensibly about a tiger who has turned unnatural and has killed and even eaten two people. Vaillant shows that this is very, very rare. This part of SE Siberia originally sustained a variety of animals in a boreal forest that is moderately warm in the summer and very cold (30 to 40 below) in the winter. Native Udeghe and Nanai people coexisted well with the tiger and consider it a god. Their shamanic religion tells them to honor and not molest the tiger. With the arrival of Russians beginning nearly 200 years ago, a lot of pressures have developed and upset the natural balance of things with logging, mining, and weapons that have been used to kill tigers. The natural food sources have diminished for the top animals and humans alike. Numbers of tigers have greatly decreased and the tigers remaining are stressed.
Much is made of what the author thinks is inside the mind of the tiger. He attributes all kinds of unsubstantiated things to the animal that he grossly anthropomorphizes. The two “murdered” men are ethnic Russians, the first a poacher who helps eke out his meager livelihood with illegal tiger hunting if the opportunity arises. Actually, he stole boar remains from a tiger’s kill. That’s what started the trouble and shows his own desperation. Poachers can sell anything tiger to meet the Chinese demand for whatever can be cut or stripped from an animal. The second man was alone in the tiger’s territory but not a poacher. An official Russian group is part of the story. They are trying to stop poachers, protect the tigers and are drawn in when this desperate tiger must be killed to protect the people in the area.
Most GR ratings are much higher than mine. The author really loses me with his trans-species understanding, tigers who take poacher’s souls and hypnotically draw the humans to their doom. Couldn’t we just stick to loss of habitat, loss of natural prey, human encroachment or even new canine distemper viruses that have been documented in tigers in SE Asia (not mentioned at all in this book). In the past native people walked into the woods unarmed telling the tiger he was the king and that worked well enough. I wouldn’t trust that now.
The book is ostensibly about a tiger who has turned unnatural and has killed and even eaten two people. Vaillant shows that this is very, very rare. This part of SE Siberia originally sustained a variety of animals in a boreal forest that is moderately warm in the summer and very cold (30 to 40 below) in the winter. Native Udeghe and Nanai people coexisted well with the tiger and consider it a god. Their shamanic religion tells them to honor and not molest the tiger. With the arrival of Russians beginning nearly 200 years ago, a lot of pressures have developed and upset the natural balance of things with logging, mining, and weapons that have been used to kill tigers. The natural food sources have diminished for the top animals and humans alike. Numbers of tigers have greatly decreased and the tigers remaining are stressed.
Much is made of what the author thinks is inside the mind of the tiger. He attributes all kinds of unsubstantiated things to the animal that he grossly anthropomorphizes. The two “murdered” men are ethnic Russians, the first a poacher who helps eke out his meager livelihood with illegal tiger hunting if the opportunity arises. Actually, he stole boar remains from a tiger’s kill. That’s what started the trouble and shows his own desperation. Poachers can sell anything tiger to meet the Chinese demand for whatever can be cut or stripped from an animal. The second man was alone in the tiger’s territory but not a poacher. An official Russian group is part of the story. They are trying to stop poachers, protect the tigers and are drawn in when this desperate tiger must be killed to protect the people in the area.
Most GR ratings are much higher than mine. The author really loses me with his trans-species understanding, tigers who take poacher’s souls and hypnotically draw the humans to their doom. Couldn’t we just stick to loss of habitat, loss of natural prey, human encroachment or even new canine distemper viruses that have been documented in tigers in SE Asia (not mentioned at all in this book). In the past native people walked into the woods unarmed telling the tiger he was the king and that worked well enough. I wouldn’t trust that now.
February 5, 2012
At its simplest, this is a tale of a tiger and two men. A Siberian tiger, huge, terrifying, beautiful, awe-inspiring. The two men: Vladimir Markov, an unemployed logger turned poacher, and Yuri Trush, a game warden whose job it is to catch poachers. They live within the tiger's range, the taiga or circumpolar boreal forest of the Russian Far East, which has been hard hit by perostroika (the locals refer to it as "katastroika"), a sort of post-industrial society in which the human inhabitants eke out an existence on the edge of starvation. The Siberian tiger lives on the edge of starvation too, and while it is protected by law, they are a great temptation to poachers, who can get as much as $50,000 for one on the black market. Markov crosses the path of a male tiger, wounds him and takes his kill. The tiger stalks him, stakes out his hunting cabin in the woods, waits at his doorstep for him to return one night, and kills him. But instead of returning to the forest and other prey, the injured tiger sets out on a path of destruction, which to those who are tracking it, as unbelievable as it seems, appears to be a journey to settle accounts. More broadly though the book is about our relationship (and responsibility) to the wild things of this earth, about the ancient, prehistoric ties between the big cats and us and the closeness between predator and prey, about human nature, animal nature, and animal intelligence. It's a fascinating story.
June 9, 2021
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant was a pleasant surprise. There is no way that I would have chosen this book if not for my book club where it came with a glowing recommendation so I had to give it a chance. Otherwise, after seeing that it was nonfiction about Russia, I would have returned this one to the shelf if I’d even looked at it in the first place.
John Vaillant skillfully intertwines Russian history with the climate and environment of the Far East region along with the adventure and survival related to tigers and tiger hunting.
I was also surprised to make connections between The Tiger and George Orwell’s 1984 as well as the short story “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell.
John Vaillant skillfully intertwines Russian history with the climate and environment of the Far East region along with the adventure and survival related to tigers and tiger hunting.
I was also surprised to make connections between The Tiger and George Orwell’s 1984 as well as the short story “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell.
December 17, 2019
Reads like true crime featuring the "Czar of the Forest."
This book is a trip into Primorye, a remote area in southeast Russia by the Sea of Japan.
A tiger tracks a man (/potential poacher) to his cabin, and waits for the man to come home. He is annihilated in one of the most violent deaths by tiger ever recorded.
"To end a person's life is one thing; to eradicate him from the face of the earth is another. The latter is far more difficult to do, and yet the tiger had done it, had transported this young man beyond death to a kind of carnal oblivion."
Sprinkled in among the hunt for the man eating tiger, is a rich history of the land, the people who call it home, and the psyche of the tigers who live there.
Tigers, like sharks, are solitary hunters existing from one kill to the next—exercising abstract thinking in the process.
Vaillant does an excellent job building up the surrounding circumstances to one rogue tiger's streak of what appears to be vengeance, breaking down every element in play from sociology to scientific facts.
"Ultimately, the problem comes down to umwelt; we are such prisoners of our subjective experience that it is only by force of will and imagination that we are able to take leave of it at all and consider the experience and essence of another creature—or even another person."
Overall, I learned a lot from this book and it reminded me of a Russian history class I took in undergrad—except more tiger oriented. The writing is very evocative and atmospheric, almost like you're tracking the tiger alongside the men.
"'She chewed up chainsaws,' he recalled, 'stole a gas can and chewed that up, covered herself in gas. Then she attacked a logger.' With life as difficult as it is in the forest, and with so many other things to focus on, the motive to do things like this is hard to ascribe to anything other than rage, desperation, or insanity—all of which lie well within the tiger's emotive spectrum."
"Stepping gingerly over the ice and plowing through the drifts, there was in its progress something relentless and mechanical: the clouds of steam chugging, engine like, from its nostrils, translucent whiskers laced with hoarfrost from its own hot breath."
***Don't worry—this book is not about killing tigers for fun or sport, it's about tracking down one tiger that went off the rails, so to speak. Valiant does due diligence in discussing the danger tigers face and the steps being taken to preserve and protect the species. He also leaves us with this:
"For tigers to exist, we have to want them to exist."
This book is a trip into Primorye, a remote area in southeast Russia by the Sea of Japan.
A tiger tracks a man (/potential poacher) to his cabin, and waits for the man to come home. He is annihilated in one of the most violent deaths by tiger ever recorded.
"To end a person's life is one thing; to eradicate him from the face of the earth is another. The latter is far more difficult to do, and yet the tiger had done it, had transported this young man beyond death to a kind of carnal oblivion."
Sprinkled in among the hunt for the man eating tiger, is a rich history of the land, the people who call it home, and the psyche of the tigers who live there.
Tigers, like sharks, are solitary hunters existing from one kill to the next—exercising abstract thinking in the process.
Vaillant does an excellent job building up the surrounding circumstances to one rogue tiger's streak of what appears to be vengeance, breaking down every element in play from sociology to scientific facts.
"Ultimately, the problem comes down to umwelt; we are such prisoners of our subjective experience that it is only by force of will and imagination that we are able to take leave of it at all and consider the experience and essence of another creature—or even another person."
Overall, I learned a lot from this book and it reminded me of a Russian history class I took in undergrad—except more tiger oriented. The writing is very evocative and atmospheric, almost like you're tracking the tiger alongside the men.
"'She chewed up chainsaws,' he recalled, 'stole a gas can and chewed that up, covered herself in gas. Then she attacked a logger.' With life as difficult as it is in the forest, and with so many other things to focus on, the motive to do things like this is hard to ascribe to anything other than rage, desperation, or insanity—all of which lie well within the tiger's emotive spectrum."
"Stepping gingerly over the ice and plowing through the drifts, there was in its progress something relentless and mechanical: the clouds of steam chugging, engine like, from its nostrils, translucent whiskers laced with hoarfrost from its own hot breath."
***Don't worry—this book is not about killing tigers for fun or sport, it's about tracking down one tiger that went off the rails, so to speak. Valiant does due diligence in discussing the danger tigers face and the steps being taken to preserve and protect the species. He also leaves us with this:
"For tigers to exist, we have to want them to exist."
June 6, 2011
Every once in a while I crave one of these true-adventure/true-story tales. This one grabs you by the throat in the first page and does not let up. Talk about a skill with language, an ability to evoke--this is an amazingly written book, fantastic! And its about tigers, and politics, and people, and the environment they share. The environment is just incredible--sub-Arctic meets sub-tropics! Hurricanes and blizzards.
Vaillant weaves together culture, politics, history, and more to tell us of the tiger. He gives a sense of one side of "the Russian soul." While I can't judge the veracity if his portrayal, it rings true. Even though he does go on and on with his anti-Sovietism, beyond Stalin, his criticism and cynicism really seem aimed more at bureaucracy and corruption, and do not stop with the Soviets. For instance, from his discussion of the degradation and rape of this unique ecosystem, we learn that: "The most valuable timber in the Far East grows in Primorye . . . Much of what China makes from this Russian wood finds it's way into American big box stores. The reason chain store prices--e.g., $20 for a solid oak toilet seat--seem too good to be true is because they are." (p. 34)
Life is hard and the area is sparsely populated, in part by exiles, in part by folks who maybe just couldn't get themselves up for the arduous (and expensive) journey back west, in part by serious loners, and in part by those who love it. Vaillant summarizes some of the difficulties: "In the taiga, the combination of poverty, unemployment, and highly dangerous people and animals exacerbates a situation that is, at best, untenable." (p. 44)
Vaillant gives us a strong flavor of the relationships between the men (and they are mostly men) and animals in this harsh environment, often through quotes with those living there. In talking about a tiger that killed a hunter, one friend says: "If the tiger had felt that it was his fault--if he had killed a dog or done something else wrong--then he would have gone away." (p.175) "The tiger is strong, powerful, and fair." (p. 178) There is much anthropomorphism here, not only as quoted, but also by Vaillant. In fact, he makes a case for its inevitability, even necessity. Certainly if it helps a hunter or trapper avoid crossing a predator like a tiger, and keep himself more or less adequately fed--who's to argue?
Beautifully written, this book displays a true respect and love for the area and all who life there.
Vaillant weaves together culture, politics, history, and more to tell us of the tiger. He gives a sense of one side of "the Russian soul." While I can't judge the veracity if his portrayal, it rings true. Even though he does go on and on with his anti-Sovietism, beyond Stalin, his criticism and cynicism really seem aimed more at bureaucracy and corruption, and do not stop with the Soviets. For instance, from his discussion of the degradation and rape of this unique ecosystem, we learn that: "The most valuable timber in the Far East grows in Primorye . . . Much of what China makes from this Russian wood finds it's way into American big box stores. The reason chain store prices--e.g., $20 for a solid oak toilet seat--seem too good to be true is because they are." (p. 34)
Life is hard and the area is sparsely populated, in part by exiles, in part by folks who maybe just couldn't get themselves up for the arduous (and expensive) journey back west, in part by serious loners, and in part by those who love it. Vaillant summarizes some of the difficulties: "In the taiga, the combination of poverty, unemployment, and highly dangerous people and animals exacerbates a situation that is, at best, untenable." (p. 44)
Vaillant gives us a strong flavor of the relationships between the men (and they are mostly men) and animals in this harsh environment, often through quotes with those living there. In talking about a tiger that killed a hunter, one friend says: "If the tiger had felt that it was his fault--if he had killed a dog or done something else wrong--then he would have gone away." (p.175) "The tiger is strong, powerful, and fair." (p. 178) There is much anthropomorphism here, not only as quoted, but also by Vaillant. In fact, he makes a case for its inevitability, even necessity. Certainly if it helps a hunter or trapper avoid crossing a predator like a tiger, and keep himself more or less adequately fed--who's to argue?
Beautifully written, this book displays a true respect and love for the area and all who life there.
December 15, 2015
THE TIGER: A TRUE STORY OF VENGEANCE AND SURVIVAL by John Vaillant is both a gripping adventure with larger than life characters, and a lesson in geography and ecology. The setting is Russia's Maritime Territory, Primorye – a thumb(or claw) of land bounded by the Sea of Japan on the east, and Manchuria and the tip of North Korea on the West. Distinctive features include Vladivostok at the southern most tip, the Amur River which flows the length from Mongolia in the north to the Tartar Strait in the south (the Chinese call it Heilongjiang-The Black Dragon). Locally, the Ussuri, flowing from north to south and connecting the Amur to Lake Khanka and the Bikin River flowing at right angles to the Ussuri are defining features of the province. That the Trans-Siberian Railway only skims the western Manchurian Russian border en route to Vladivostok is a pointed reminder of the region's remoteness. The average population of the area is less than 1 person per square kilometer. The action centers around a former forestry village, Sobolonye (Sable Place). It is from such linguistic details that much of the flavor of the book resides.
The human inhabitants are a motley assemblage of soviet remnants, ethnic exiles and indigenous Nanai and Udegheghk. Yuri Anatolievich Trush is leader of the Tiger Inspection squad. His background includes soldiering in Kazakhstan in the 70's, competitive weight lifting, and teaching hand-to-hand fighting to the military police, His salary as part of the Tiger Inspection Unit is paid by foreign conservation groups. As a child, he hunted with his father in the forests east of the Urals. In the military, he also worked as a fishing inspector. Vladimir Markov, the victim, was part of the troop concentration in the 1969 Russian-Chinese border confrontations. Trained in reconnaissance skills, he was able to adapt to the remote taiga and chose it over the chaos in the wake of Perestroika (nicknamed “Katastroika” by some Russians) engulfing the rest of the country. Here he maintained a subsistence living in the forest, and possibly dabbled in lucrative poaching. Finally, the third major character is the Amur tiger. The word “amba” is used both for the tiger and a malevolent spirit said to sometimes take the earthly form of a tiger. A particular canon revolves around a specialized amba, the egule, a kind of man-eating weretiger. As well as a rich mythology, a pragmatic maxim of circumspection: If I don't bother her, she won't bother me,” facilitated human life among the Amur tigers.
The pivotal question in this story is whether the Amur tiger has the capacity for vengeance. A history of stories from naturalists and hunters as well as current inhabitants has been gathered supporting such a claim A convincing theoretical framework for such a notion is advanced with Jakob von Uexkuell's concept of the Umwelt. Finally, the events leading up to the death of Markov and their astonishing aftermath are reconstructed. It is a story of a tiger transformed by his vengeful encounter with Markov. This is the story arc of the book and the sense of psychological tension and drama are sufficient to hold the reader's interest from beginning to end.
I loved this book so much that I was moved to make a contribution to one of the conservation groups Vaillant mentions in his book. It is an extraordinary story of human survival and co-existence with nature, as well as the intelligence, natural history, and prospects for the Amur Tiger.
NOTE: 12/15/2015, article about Zolushka, successfully released into the wild. http://www.ifaw.org/united-states/new...
The human inhabitants are a motley assemblage of soviet remnants, ethnic exiles and indigenous Nanai and Udegheghk. Yuri Anatolievich Trush is leader of the Tiger Inspection squad. His background includes soldiering in Kazakhstan in the 70's, competitive weight lifting, and teaching hand-to-hand fighting to the military police, His salary as part of the Tiger Inspection Unit is paid by foreign conservation groups. As a child, he hunted with his father in the forests east of the Urals. In the military, he also worked as a fishing inspector. Vladimir Markov, the victim, was part of the troop concentration in the 1969 Russian-Chinese border confrontations. Trained in reconnaissance skills, he was able to adapt to the remote taiga and chose it over the chaos in the wake of Perestroika (nicknamed “Katastroika” by some Russians) engulfing the rest of the country. Here he maintained a subsistence living in the forest, and possibly dabbled in lucrative poaching. Finally, the third major character is the Amur tiger. The word “amba” is used both for the tiger and a malevolent spirit said to sometimes take the earthly form of a tiger. A particular canon revolves around a specialized amba, the egule, a kind of man-eating weretiger. As well as a rich mythology, a pragmatic maxim of circumspection: If I don't bother her, she won't bother me,” facilitated human life among the Amur tigers.
The pivotal question in this story is whether the Amur tiger has the capacity for vengeance. A history of stories from naturalists and hunters as well as current inhabitants has been gathered supporting such a claim A convincing theoretical framework for such a notion is advanced with Jakob von Uexkuell's concept of the Umwelt. Finally, the events leading up to the death of Markov and their astonishing aftermath are reconstructed. It is a story of a tiger transformed by his vengeful encounter with Markov. This is the story arc of the book and the sense of psychological tension and drama are sufficient to hold the reader's interest from beginning to end.
I loved this book so much that I was moved to make a contribution to one of the conservation groups Vaillant mentions in his book. It is an extraordinary story of human survival and co-existence with nature, as well as the intelligence, natural history, and prospects for the Amur Tiger.
NOTE: 12/15/2015, article about Zolushka, successfully released into the wild. http://www.ifaw.org/united-states/new...
April 10, 2012
This is a hard book to rate. Some passages were brilliant and rated a 4; others bored me half to death and would merit only a 2. Overall a decent read, with good subject matter and adequate research. The author has a tendency to wander off topic; sometimes this enhances the story but there are those other times where you wish he would quit lecturing and get back on topic, already. It's a book with great potential but might have been improved by being briefer and more to the point.
August 18, 2022
A blurb on the back cover says, "the adventure book of the year." It is that, and this 2010 book certainly kept me riveted. But more than that, it is a study of a predator, a particular Amur, or Siberian, tiger ( the world's biggest cat) who turned man-eater in 1997. We learn about these great cats who face a severe threat due to poaching for the China market and habitat destruction. But it's also a story of people, the people of Primorye, the Russian Far East. This is a very isolated area of the world where people-both Russian and indigenous-struggle to survive in some of the harshest conditions in the world. We meet some truly incredible people who have dedicated themselves to stopping poaching and protecting the tigers and other wildlife in their wild region of Northern Asia. For the most part, tigers and humans have coexisted for thousands of years, but this story focuses on one tiger who went after a human hunter as if it was a personal vendetta. Vaillant reconstructs all the events leading to the final confrontation and also seeks to understand what could have happened to make one of nature's most deadly predators into a man-eater.
January 6, 2023
7/10
Tigers are wild, man.
Tigers are wild, man.
November 25, 2012
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival has a great piece of advice if you ever find yourself in the wilds… don’t screw with a tiger. (I would have said something stronger but my wife has told me to “clean up” my vocabulary.) This book gets a strong 4.5 to 5 Stars from me. I was hooked on the story from the first page. The drama of a wounded tiger seeking and wreaking vengeance sounds “Hollywood” but Mr. Vaillant shows how this true story is even better than cinematic fiction. The major framework is built around the tiger, his victims and the pursuers out to kill the man-eater. What makes this book so interesting is the tangents that Vaillant goes off on (I can see how some would find this distracting from the story). I rate this book highly for the new concepts it introduced me to.
The backdrop of far eastern Siberia, deep in the grip of winter and suffering in the aftermath of the USSR collapse, is brought vividly to life. I studied Russian for 3 years in school, came up in the military with the Great Russian Bear threat hanging over our western way of life, trained to fight the USSR in the Fulda Gap and the North German plain, yet, always held a certain amount of respect for them. This book really brings the Russian capacity for endurance into focus. These people have a tough life in the forests and the taiga of Siberia. The characters in the book are all very interesting and often tragic or sad.
This book brings you into discussions of zoology, anthropology, sociology, taphonomy, and paleontology just to name a few areas. You are introduced to the concepts of Umwelt and Unbegung. These are fascinating ways to look at how we (and animals) may perceive our environment. Here is one discussion to give you an idea how the book explains predator and prey:
You will veer off the main story often but always with a point. A visit to the Kalahari Desert and the Bushmen gives an idea how man coexists with nature’s predators. A discussion of other paleoanthropologists gives you a different view on whether man was a hunter/killer or a scavenger in the earliest days. A great vignette from WWII-era South Africa and two German fugitives from the war is another enlightening story. I found these tangents instructive and fun. You will also relive tiger attacks with several who have survived these awful encounters. Here is a verse from one of the survivors:
I’ve read a tiger’s not dangerous,
They say the tiger won’t attack
But one thing’s not clear to me.
Has he read this, too? Does he know?
In the end, the Tiger meets his end but the chase is exciting right to the amazing final encounter. The impact of Chinese expansion and Russian corruption on the habitat is constant and may result in the extinction of this “czar of the forest”. Read this book to understand what a tragedy that will be.
The backdrop of far eastern Siberia, deep in the grip of winter and suffering in the aftermath of the USSR collapse, is brought vividly to life. I studied Russian for 3 years in school, came up in the military with the Great Russian Bear threat hanging over our western way of life, trained to fight the USSR in the Fulda Gap and the North German plain, yet, always held a certain amount of respect for them. This book really brings the Russian capacity for endurance into focus. These people have a tough life in the forests and the taiga of Siberia. The characters in the book are all very interesting and often tragic or sad.
This book brings you into discussions of zoology, anthropology, sociology, taphonomy, and paleontology just to name a few areas. You are introduced to the concepts of Umwelt and Unbegung. These are fascinating ways to look at how we (and animals) may perceive our environment. Here is one discussion to give you an idea how the book explains predator and prey:
You will veer off the main story often but always with a point. A visit to the Kalahari Desert and the Bushmen gives an idea how man coexists with nature’s predators. A discussion of other paleoanthropologists gives you a different view on whether man was a hunter/killer or a scavenger in the earliest days. A great vignette from WWII-era South Africa and two German fugitives from the war is another enlightening story. I found these tangents instructive and fun. You will also relive tiger attacks with several who have survived these awful encounters. Here is a verse from one of the survivors:
I’ve read a tiger’s not dangerous,
They say the tiger won’t attack
But one thing’s not clear to me.
Has he read this, too? Does he know?
In the end, the Tiger meets his end but the chase is exciting right to the amazing final encounter. The impact of Chinese expansion and Russian corruption on the habitat is constant and may result in the extinction of this “czar of the forest”. Read this book to understand what a tragedy that will be.
December 17, 2019
The review to read here is by Will Byrnes, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Key quote: "Vaillant’s tiger tale is nuanced." Note that the man-killing tiger was injured, and could no longer hunt its usual prey -- as is common in historic man-eaters. And tigers need a LOT of meat to survive a Siberian winter. You do not want to be charged by a hungry, 500 pound tiger! It's quite a story, and I recommend it with a few reservations. 3.7 stars, rounded up.
A couple more adds, from my sparse notes: Well-written and well-researched but TMI at times. Then again, chilling grace notes: an incident when a pride of lions in Africa slaughtered an entire troop of baboons. When the baboons realized they had no hope of escape, they covered their eyes and awaited their fate.
People and tigers don't coexist well. Especially in a place like Russia's "Wild East." But their population has modestly rebounded since Vaillant's book was written, due to intensive conservation efforts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia...
Here's the review that led me to read it, by Kelly Robson, https://kellyrobson.com/my-favorite-n...
"In the isolated Amur region of Siberia, poachers hunt tigers, and the tigers hunt them right back. This is the story of how tigers respond to human threat, taking revenge in ways that are simultaneously human and alien. We know cats are smart. This book show’s they’re also psychologically sophisticated. Cats know us well.
At points, while reading this book, I simply had to scream, “No way!” It’s brilliant."
Key quote: "Vaillant’s tiger tale is nuanced." Note that the man-killing tiger was injured, and could no longer hunt its usual prey -- as is common in historic man-eaters. And tigers need a LOT of meat to survive a Siberian winter. You do not want to be charged by a hungry, 500 pound tiger! It's quite a story, and I recommend it with a few reservations. 3.7 stars, rounded up.
A couple more adds, from my sparse notes: Well-written and well-researched but TMI at times. Then again, chilling grace notes: an incident when a pride of lions in Africa slaughtered an entire troop of baboons. When the baboons realized they had no hope of escape, they covered their eyes and awaited their fate.
People and tigers don't coexist well. Especially in a place like Russia's "Wild East." But their population has modestly rebounded since Vaillant's book was written, due to intensive conservation efforts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia...
Here's the review that led me to read it, by Kelly Robson, https://kellyrobson.com/my-favorite-n...
"In the isolated Amur region of Siberia, poachers hunt tigers, and the tigers hunt them right back. This is the story of how tigers respond to human threat, taking revenge in ways that are simultaneously human and alien. We know cats are smart. This book show’s they’re also psychologically sophisticated. Cats know us well.
At points, while reading this book, I simply had to scream, “No way!” It’s brilliant."
December 23, 2020
Vaillant combines a hair-raising account of hunting a man-eating tiger with a whole universe of surrounding context -- on the harsh realities of modern Russia, the primordial paths of human evolution, the global history of cats, the driving forces of East Asian economics, and the ecological riches of Siberia. The portraits of real Siberian people are written with passionate respect. The tigers become individuals you can't forget. The whole thing is a marvelous testimony to the challenge and necessity for humans and the planet's other glorious creatures to find the means to co-exist. Absolutely fantastic depth reporting.
September 21, 2010
Back story Hell: back story about Russia, back story about China, back story about China vs Russia, back story about the main character, back story about tigers, back story about man-eating tigers, back story about victims of man eating tigers. I expected something akin to Jaws on Land and got lengthy discourses on the failure of perestroika and how utterly crappy it is to live in villages where the temperature gets to 40below.
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