Tiger Moon - Softcover

Michaelis, Antonia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810944995 ISBN 13: 9780810944992

Publisher: Amulet Paperbacks, 2009

Synopsis

How does a story of India begin? Does it begin with the three great rivers—the Ganges, the Yamuna, the unseen Sarasvati pouring her dreaming waters down from the snowy mountains to the hot, dry plain?
 
This bewitching story within a story, set in magical India, explores the power of narrative to change the course of lives. Raka, the doomed young bride of a violent merchant, weaves a tale of rescue so vivid, it might just come true. She tells a servant boy the story of Farhad, a thief and unlikely hero, who must retrieve a famous jewel in order to save a kidnapped princess from a demon king. Farhad’s unforgettable companion on the journey is a wisecracking white tiger with an unnatural fear of water. It is their unusual and funny friendship, and the final sacrifice that they must make, that is the heart of this grand, beautiful novel about summoning the hero within.

F&P level: Z+
F&P genre: F

About this title

About the Author:

Antonia Michaelis has lived and taught in India. She is the author of several award-winning books published in her native Germany, where she lives. Anthea Bell is the translator of Cornelia Funke’s bestselling Inkheart books. Her work has won the Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize, and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. She lives in Cambridge, Great Britain.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Deftly interweaving Indian history, culture, and mythology, this richly layered tale, set in India at the beginning of the twentieth century, beautifully illustrates the power of storytelling. Having failed to escape a forced betrothal to brutish merchant Ahmed Mudhi, Safia is now a captive in his palace. While awaiting her wedding night, she is befriended by a palace servant, Lagan, and begins to tell him the story of a young thief, Farhad; his talking, sacred tiger companion; and their quest to retrieve the fabled Bloodstone in order to rescue a princess from the Demon King. Safia and Farhad's intersecting stories illuminate themes of destiny and free will; immortality and rebirth; compassion and humanity; and the power of stories to entertain, inspire, and transform. Originally published in Germany, Michaelis’s novel is an absorbing epic with diverse characters, written in lyrical prose that combines vivid imagery with droll, sometimes pointed commentary and some mature plot elements: Safia is sentenced to death, for example, after Ahmed discovers that she is not a virgin. Michaelis proves a highly accomplished storyteller in this sweeping, beguiling tale where things and people are not always as they seem and where characters (and readers) discover that “stories are an excellent way of escape.” Grades 9-12. --Shelle Rosenfeld

About this edition

• Publisher: Amulet Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0810944995
• ISBN 13: 9780810944992
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480