The Tiger

This is a lovely book about a Siberian Tiger that stocked and killed hunters who had been hunting tigers. Vaillant situates this fascinating story into the collapse of the Soviet Union. People on the far eastern edge of Russian Siberia, the Amur River area, were desperate to survive as the economy collapsed.

At the same time, China is taking off, and the affluent will buy tiger parts at great cost to increase their sexual stamina. Thus, desperate Russian hunters arrive. Vaillant does a great job following a game warden as he tries to solve the crime of a tiger seemingly… show more.

This non-fiction book takes you to a distant place in what feels like a distant time: the Russian Far East region of Primorski Krai on the Pacific, a giant forest on the Pacific that used to be a part of China and full of huge Siberian tigers, but at the time of the book – the period of collapse following Glasnost – is full of rather down-at-heel poachers and loggers, policed by a small but dedicated team of conservationists.

When one of the poachers wounds a tiger, it tracks him down – apparently as revenge – and eats him, then… show more.