Obreht, Téa
Entry updated 15 April 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1985- ) Yugoslavia/Serbia-born author, in US from the age of twelve. Her birth name was Téa Bajraktarević; she took her grandfather's surname in 2006. Her first novel, The Tiger's Wife (2010), arguably replicating Obreht's closeness to her grandfather, is structured around the tales told a young doctor by her grandfather. These tales, featuring a man who does not die and a deaf-mute girl, dextrously interact with Fantastika in general, through they are recounted as though they were folklore. Inland (2019) is a Western which conveys a similar folkloric air through its protagonist's attempts to cope with a mysterious camel (camels were in fact occasionally introduced into western America), and with a man capable of talking to the dead.
Obreht is of more direct sf interest for The Morningside (2024), which is set in an estranging Near Future darkened by Climate Change. The protagonist is caught in Morningside, a luxury enclave or Zone – clearly a version of the real Morningside Heights in Manhattan (see New York) – surrounded by the waters which have drowned the City that had been her home. Here she knits together paths of recourse through the folktales her aunt tells her of a world, now gone, that had been mappable through the full lives then enjoyed, while awaiting rehousing as part of a campaign to reinhabit the devastated megalopolis. [JC]
Téa Obreht
born Belgrade, Yugoslavia [now Serbia]: 30 September 1985
works
- The Tiger's Wife (London: Orion/Phoenix, 2010) [pb/]
- Inland (New York: Random House, 2019) [hb/]
- The Morningside (New York: Random House, 2024) [hb/]
links
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