The setting of John Vaillant’s remarkable work of narrative non-fiction The Tiger is Primorye, a little known province in Russia’s far east, a cruel and inhospitable place that is, counter-intuitively, crowded with the most unlikely profusion of wildlife, an array of flora and fauna so rich that the like of it exists in few other places in the world. Perhaps the most notable of these is the Amur tiger, an animal that has stepped maddeningly at the edges of dreams and superstition of all who cross it. To the residents of Primorye, to the native peoples and the European Russians alike, the tiger is not just one of many animals that crackle through the frigid undergrowth or slink amidst the dense arboreal profusion of the taiga, but is something else again, a canny huntress given fearful reverence, awed respect. The tiger is the perfect predator, adapted to this most challenging of environments to an almost incomprehensible degree, and armed not only with staggering physical strength and agility, but also, if we’re to believe Vaillant’s account, with an almost human-like habit of mind, the ability to understand what another is thinking. It seems that the Amur tiger is not only perfectly primed as a huntress, but also as a cold-blooded revenge killer: it is endlessly patient, incomparably determined, boundlessly brutal, and all but impossible to track.

Vaillant’s account traces a series of tiger-related deaths in the tiny hamlet of Sobolonye, a place thick with poverty, with despair, and whose inhabitants, abraded by the incessant rasping of life, sustain themselves with vodka and sheer fatalism. In a world where basic subsistence is by no means a given, some residents of Sobolonye turn to poaching; others turn a blind eye. Trush, the leader of Inspection Tiger, an organisation tasked with the investigation of poaching activity, is customarily called in to investigate illegal kills and shootings; it is with some trepidation that he responds to a call relating to a tiger mauling near Sobolonye. The remains are revealed to be those of Vladimir Markov, a struggling beekeeper who, contrary to the vehement arguments from the townsfolk otherwise, had patently been lured by financial promise into tiger poaching. Closer analysis, however, reveals that Markov’s death was no chance attack: rather, he had been systematically stalked by the very same tiger he had been attempting to kill. Trush, like any Primorzhnik, is all too aware of the tiger’s propensity towards revenge, of her ability to hold a grudge to seemingly impossible lengths, and his perturbation heightens exponentially when a second body is found brutalised almost beyond recognition. Trush, torn between his duty to protect the tiger, and his knowledge of its unparalleled ability for vengeance, sets out in search of this animal he simultaneously reveres and fears. As the narrative progresses, both he and the tiger become the hunter and the hunted, the misunderstood, the wronged, the dismissed, the lost, and Vaillant’s careful, ethnographically infused lead up to the inexorable final show down is nothing short of mesmerising.

The Tiger is a story not only of a tiger, but of all tigers. Through this challenging historical account, Vaillant positions his tiger in a way that it becomes an archetype, a representation of the recent, and less such, history of this magnificent animal and the way that this history intersects with that of various invasions: colonialism, war, the exigencies of crushing poverty amidst a failing post-perestroika economy. Vaillant deftly weaves together a complex series of historical, anthropological, and zoological vignettes into a dense, sprawling narrative that is all but impossible to put down. It’s circuitous, yes, but the digressions and asides that may be considered extraneous padding in a lesser book here all play their part in helping to flesh out, brush stroke by brush stroke, the extraordinary portrait being painted by Vaillant. Much like an exquisite painting, it’s only in those last finishing touches that the entire story comes together, and one can step back to see how an image has taken shape over the essential and careful scaffolding on which it rests.

Vaillant’s knowledge of Primorye is encyclopaedic, but this does not mean that it is shallow or cursory: he achieves not only the breadth of knowledge found in these dusty old tomes, but digs deeper, using personal accounts and family histories to illustrate the monstrous struggle that is simple existence in this frigid, inhospitable area. Primorye is a region so unlikely that it might almost be a fabrication, might almost be something torn from Paradise Lost or The Divine Comedy. It is an amoral place, a place where the social and judicial laws that guide our lives no longer apply. It is a place where the land is king and humans are unwanted trespassers, where the weather is so fierce and uncompromising that human artefacts, and humans themselves, are beyond the natural laws by which we’re usually restrained, where men find themselves identifying with, and at times inhabiting the worlds of these predators whose most primal urge is to survive at whatever cost; to prove themselves once more. There is a resonance of desperation, of determination throughout the book, with humans and tiger linked by this same surging force. Vaillant cleverly allows his work to reflect not only on the tragic situation of the tiger, and the way that despite protective efforts its numbers are dwindling due to black market demand from Asia and the equally callous pressures of would-be bounty hunters, but also on the similarly desultory situation of Primorye’s inhabitants. The ever decreasing number of Amur tigers in the wild is juxtaposed against the raft of suicides and deaths attributable to the conditions within the region, and also the challenges posed by the world outside. In Primorye, both man and the tiger are falling prey to these incessant threats; but while the tiger is at least afforded some protection, in the case of the human residents, no assistance is forthcoming.

To me as a reader, this book was exquisitely wrought, and near flawless in its execution. If there are faults with The Tiger, they tend to fall at the prose level, which is sometimes weakened by awkward phrasing and extended similes that don’t quite ring true. There are times, for example,  when the tiger as metaphor is stretched a little thin, or daubed on to Vaillant’s narrative portrait with a degree of heavy-handedness: this is particularly the case with the anthropomorphisation of the tiger, especially in the latter half of the book. However, it’s easy to set these small grievances aside when considered in the wider context of this stunningly accomplished work.

Rating:

With thanks to Sceptre for the review copy.

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