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Tigers In Red Weather

On sale

5th October 2006

Price: £12.99

Kiriyama Prize, Pacific Rim Voices, 2007

Selected: Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780349116983

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When Ruth Padel saw an advert for a cheap break to India, she decided to visit what she had always wanted to see: tropical jungle and a wildlife sanctuary. Her impromptu trip was the start of a remarkable two-year journey in search of that most elusive and beautiful animal: the tiger.

Armed with her granny’s opera glasses and a pair of Tunisian trainers, she sets off across Asia to ask the question: can the tiger be saved from extinction in the wild? Plunging into leech-infested jungles, she tracks tigers by jeep, by elephant and on foot, from Bangladesh to Bhutan, from China to far-east Russia. The result is a unique blend of natural history, travel literature and memoir, and an intimate portrait of an animal we have loved and feared almost to destruction.

Reviews

Ruth Padel is a wonderful writer and she has produced perhaps the best book ever written on the places where tigers live
EVENING STANDARD
An extraordinary travel-memoir . . . this is no mere gutsy travelogue, but a poet's attempt to do what a scientist does: "saying precisely what and how you saw" . . . utterly compelling
INDEPENDENT
There are few women writing non-fiction today with such a sophisticated understanding of language, such a nuanced approach to style, and such a brazen willingness to engage with the big issues, personal and political. This is a gripping and informative book, always intriguing and occasionally dazzling
GUARDIAN
Thrilling and surprising . . . her prose has an intense, lush quality . . . She has an adventurer's intrepid spirit and a poet's eye for detail and ear for dialogue
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH