Where Tigers Are at Home
A Novel
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Prix Médicis, this multifaceted literary novel follows the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher across 17th century Europe and Eleazard von Wogau, a retired French correspondent, through modern Brazil.
When Eleazard begins editing a strange, unpublished biography of Kircher, the rest of his life seems to begin unraveling—his ex-wife goes on a dangerous geological expedition to Mato Grosso; his daughter abandons school to travel with her young professor and her lesbian lover to an indigenous beach town, where the trio use drugs and form interdependent sexual relationships; and Eleazard himself starts losing his sanity, escalated by loneliness, and his work on the biography. Patterns begin to emerge from these interwoven narratives, which develop toward a mesmerizing climax.
Shortlisted for the Goncourt Prize and the European Book Award, and already translated into 14 languages, Where Tigers Are At Home is large-scale epic, at once literary and entertaining, that belongs in the company of Umberto Eco and Haruki Murakami.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Writing in French a story set in Brazil, Blas de Robl s simultaneously channels Umberto Eco, Indiana Jones, and Jorge Amado in his internationally acclaimed 800-plus page riff on science, civilization, and self-interest. Fact and fiction interweave through alternating narratives: a French journalist attempts to translate a 17th-century manuscript recording the life of real-life Jesuit scholar Anathasius Kircher as seen through the eyes of his private secretary; the journalist's ex-wife searches for rare fossils in the Amazon rain forest; the journalist's daughter seeks oblivion in drugs and sex; Nelson, a 10-year-old crippled beggar, exists among the dregs of society; Carlotta, wife of a corrupt politician, entertains the elite. The novel opens with journalist El azard von Wogau reading about Kircher's wide-ranging academic studies and acquaintances with figures like Bernini, Galileo, and Sweden's Queen Christina. But what begins as a faux metabiography turns to picaresque adventure with erotic escapades, scams, and unexpected changes of fortune: Elaine von Wogau's geological expedition is attacked in the jungle and must seek refuge among headhunters, while her daughter, Mo ma, spirals downward into addiction. From a foul-mouthed macaw to Leonardo's flying machine, this sprawling novel depicts "the absurdity beneath which the criminal stupidity of men generally hides."
