Téa Obreht’s success has her worried, said Rebecca Thurlow in The Wall Street Journal. The 25-year-old writer, who was born in the former Yugoslavia, last week became the youngest-ever winner of Britain’s Orange Prize for fiction, thanks to her debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife. The story of a young doctor investigating her grandfather’s death in the aftermath of a Balkan war, the book traffics heavily in the region’s folklore, the same kind that seems to be affecting Obreht’s outlook these days. “I now get to do what I love, and that is insane to me,” she says. “There’s this superstition in the Balkans that if you are happy, something is going to get you.” She based her novel on the life and tales of her own grandfather, who passed away several years ago. “We were very close,” she says.
Obreht’s dark superstitions are offset in part by her sense that her grandfather would have been proud of her, said Carolyn Kellogg in the Los Angeles Times. A big believer in the American dream, he insisted that his granddaughter move to the U.S., and it was his death that got Obreht writing. “I started writing this relationship about a girl and her grandfather,” she says. “It all happened naturally.” What she says she values most about her success is the fact that her book will now be translated into several languages, including Serbo-Croatian. “My grandma is going to get to read it. She has never read any of my work, and that will be nice.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Today's political cartoons - September 7, 2024Cartoons Saturday's cartoons - football widows, meddling kids, and more
-
Smoking ban: the return of the nanny state?Talking Point Starmer's plan to revive Sunak-era war on tobacco has struck an unsettling chord even with some non-smokers
-
Crossword: September 7, 2024The Week's daily crossword puzzle
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”