Eka Kurniawan’s Man Tiger opens with a murder, which is not unusual. What is unusual is disclosing both, murderer and victim in the first line. There is no mystery here, so what keeps you turning the pages are the hows and whys, weaving together the events that lead to it.
Two families, through two generations, the love, the hate, the indifference, the anger, the deception. Margio is an ordinary young boy who hunts hogs. Well, ordinary if you don’t count the white tigress that lives within him. This is the only hint of supernatural or fantasy in the book, the rest of it firmly grounded in the squalor and poverty that he is born into. Born to an abusive father and a mother who has lost her mind, Margio has little in life to look forward to. Until he finds a sanctuary in Anwar Sadat’s home, understanding, and appreciation.
him falling in love with Anwar Sadat’s daughter Maharani. The relationship is doomed for reasons known only to him. When she learns the truth, it breaks her heart, and their relationship.
The reason continues to affect his life and then spirals out of control, resulting in Anwar Sadat’s
death.
Kurniawan’s prose is powerful and holds you enthralled. Wild gardens, wilder storms, cacao
plantations, snakefilled swamps, homes that get packed-up and carried away, his descriptions of coastal Indonesia are exotic even while being quotidian.
He pulls no punches and some of the descriptions are positively lurid—the veins and tendons hanging from the neck, the blood spouting, the tofu-sized piece of flesh. Not a read for the faint-hearted, the easily disgusted. Man Tiger is also a fabulous portrait of the cultural potpourri that is Indonesia. Hog-hunting Muslims with names like Maharani, exchanging Mahabharata trading cards. The transitions are seamless and you’d be hard-pressed to separate the two religious influences on their lives. It is a book to be read in one sitting and not dipped into at leisure, for the force that it carries you away with.