The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival - Softcover

'Enriched by sparkling sidetracks into nature and history, this enthralling true-crime narrative takes us on a snowbound search not only for a beast but for a motive. Like its superb quarry, Vaillant's book moves with grace and stealth, covers a vast terrain and shakes the observer's soul' (Independent)

'The structure of Vaillant's nonfiction hunting tale echoes that of "Moby-Dick," alternating a gripping chase narrative -- the search, in the late 1990s, for a man-eating Amur tiger in the Primorye region, on Russia's far eastern border -- with dense explanations of the culture and ecology surrounding the chase.' (New York Times)

'The Tiger also counts as a supreme example of true-crime writing driven by wide-angle empathy and compassion. Some readers may choose to shelve it, not among cosy wildlife yarns, but with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.' (Boyd Tonkin, Independent)

'This is an altogether different kind of manhunt story . . . . The pursuit culminates in a breathtaking stand-off of man versus cat in a forest clearing - a denouement every bit as explosive and surprising as the raid in Abbottabad earlier this week.' (Hampton Sides, Wall Street Journal)

'A personal favourite of mine, an extraordinary account of a tracker on the trail of a Siberian man-eating tiger in 1997. Along the way we get a load of tiger facts and a beautiful portrait of a forbidding region. It is a stunning, lovely, lovely book.' (Bookseller)

'extraordinary ... a brilliantly told tale of man and nature' (Tim Flannery, New York Review of Books)

a remarkable story, exceptionally well told. (Financial Times)

The Tiger is the sort of book I very much like and rarely find. Humans are hard-wired to fear tigers, so this book will attract intense interest. (Annie Proulx)

'The Tiger takes us on a journey to the raw edge of civilization, to a world of vengeful cats and venal men, a world that, in Vaillant's brilliant telling, is simultaneously haunting and enchanting.' (Hampton Sides, author of Ghost Soldiers)

This book must be read by everybody who is interested in the conservation of wildlife. It takes you to the Russian wilderness to meet face-to-face with the Siberian tiger. (Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation)

The gripping true story of the hunt for a man-eating tiger across the forbidding landscape of Russia's Far East....