Book Review: The Tiger by John Vaillant

The Tiger by John Vaillant tells the true story of a horrific, yet fascinting, series of events that took place in December of 2007 in the far far east of Russia in a province called Primorski Krai in the Bikin River Valley. In a nutshell, a wounded Amur tiger defies the ancient mutual respect between tigers and humans in the desolate taiga and preys on two men, who we get to know well in the story. After these two skilled hunters and woodsmen are eaten, a team of government wildlife officials and local residents venture into the -40 degree taiga to hunt and exterminate this dangerous mankiller. Once they succeed, they determine that the tiger, an old large male, had been shot numerous times in its life, proving that the violation of human/tiger respect was certainly not one-sided. The 300 page story is extremely thorough, not only in its detail of the actual events that occurred in the winter of 1997 in one of the coldest and most remote areas of the world, but in its character development of numerous men and tigers, the tragic and complex depressed social and political challenges of post-Perestoika Far East Russia, the natural history of tigers and the taiga, and the cultural and spiritual beliefs of the native people who inhabit the area in regards to the Czar of the Forest- the tiger. Difficult topics such as the tension between human desperation and wildlife conservation, the devastation effects of Marxism on the natural environments of Russia and China, and the relationships between evolution, self preservation, and conservation are woven into the story with thought-provocing grace. I particularly enjoy the way the book, which is clearly meticulously researched and very intelligently written, taps into the primal animal realities of our human nature. Here's a quote from the epilogue:

"..This is precisely where the tension lies: Panthera tigris and Homo sapiens are actually very much alike, and we are drawn to many of the same things, if for slightly different reasons. Both of us demand large territories; both of us have prodigious appetites for meat; both of us require control over our living space and are prepared to defend it, and both of us have an enormous sense of entitlement to the resources around us. If a tiger can poach on another's territory, it probably will, and, so, of course, will we. A key difference, however, is that tigers take only what they need."

When I first watched the movie Being John Malcovich, I had this exciting sense that the movie was made just for me; it brilliantly combined all the elements I like in a film in a quirky and surprising way and just tickled me pink. I had a similar sense about this book. The way it combines killer story telling with detailed descriptions of the complex setting and tolerable doses of philosophizing really worked for me. By the end of the story, I was almost tired of the tedious narration of the events of the tiger hunt, but that was wrapped up before it really got to me. All in all, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is fired up and intrigued by the wild and by the broad and disturbing spectrum of human nature.