

This ancient, tenuous relationship between man and predator is at the very heart of this remarkable book. And we come to know their descendants, who, crushed by poverty, have turned to poaching and further upset the natural balance of the region. We witness the arrival of Russian settlers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, soldiers and hunters who greatly diminished the tiger populations. We meet the native tribes who for centuries have worshipped and lived alongside tigers, even sharing their kills with them. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again.Īs he re-creates these extraordinary events, John Vaillant gives us an unforgettable portrait of this spectacularly beautiful and mysterious region. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren’t random: The tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. The tiger isn’t just killing people, it’s annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. It’s December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia’s Far East.
