Tiger, Tiger — Johanna Skibsrud

Shortlisted for the 2019 Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction

A collection of intrepid and incisive stories from the Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author of The Sentimentalists

Tiger, Tiger takes readers from the Paradise Valley Senior Centre parking lot all the way to Mars and examines the contradictions of life along the way. An astounding array of characters come up against the challenges of existence--both mundane and extraordinary--and their experiences never fail to surprise and delight.
     A scientist finds the truth about love in a lab where he is learning to grow extinct tigers. A fake wedding at a nursing home brings a divorcée to the brink of despair while her grandmother marvels at the beauty around her. A small-town taxidermist realizes his fiancée is never returning--that he has lost her to an inscrutable ball of light. A soldier survives the bloody Battle of the Argonne Forest but loses the faith of his child. An uncanny teenager holds two hundred thousand years of the world's history in her mind but feels desperately alone.
     Profound and paradoxical, these fourteen stories bring us closer to the truth, even if we discover that it is ultimately unknowable. Masterfully crafted and astonishingly wise, Tiger, Tiger explores the limits of understanding, the future of humanity, and establishes Skibsrud as a rare and exceptional talent.