It is credit to the animal that it has survived at all in a landscape bearing the fresh scars of political oppression and the resulting economic impoverishment - especially given the lust of the neighboring Chinese for Amur tigers’ parts, from penis to paw. Vaillant’s intimate portrait of this animal is one part deftly delivered, seamlessly amalgamated journalism to two parts brutally beautiful prose and storytelling prowess - and it renders in our imaginations a creature so calculatingly cunning (at the home of one victim, the big cat drags a mattress outside and lounges on it while waiting for its next victim to return home), and so powerful, it can take down the Russian brown bear, cousin to North America’s grizzly. It is an absolutely gripping tale of man and nature that leads inexorably to a final showdown in a clearing deep in the taiga.JOHN VAILLANT’S TALE of a beast that methodically stalked, killed, and devoured a post-perestroika poacher in the southeast corner of Russia makes it clear why William Blake’s most widely anthologized poems pit God’s lamb not against a lion, but a tiger. And we come to know their descendants, who, crushed by poverty, have turned to poaching and further upset the natural balance of the region.īeautifully 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. We witness the arrival of Russian settlers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, soldiers and hunters who greatly diminished the tiger populations. We meet the native tribes who for centuries have worshipped and lived alongside tigers, even sharing their kills with them. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again.Īs he re-creates these extraordinary events, John Vaillant gives us an unforgettable portrait of this spectacularly beautiful and mysterious region.

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. 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.

It's December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote Russian village.

The tiger john vaillant review