Téa Obreht | |
|---|---|
 Obreht at Pen America/Free Expression Literature, May 2014. | |
| Born | Tea Bajraktarević (1985-09-30)30 September 1985 (age 40) |
| Occupation | Fiction writer |
| Education | University of Southern California Cornell University (MFA) |
| Genre | Novels, short stories |
| Notable works | The Tiger's Wife |
| Notable awards | Orange Prize(2011) |
| Website | |
| teaobreht | |
Téa Obreht (bornTea Bajraktarević; 30 September 1985) is an American novelist.[1][2][3] She won theOrange Prize for Fiction in 2011 forThe Tiger's Wife, herdebut novel.[4][5]
Téa Obreht was born as Tea Bajraktarević in the autumn of 1985, inBelgrade,SR Serbia,SFR Yugoslavia as the only child of a single mother, Maja, while her father, aBosniak, was "never part of the picture."[citation needed] Because of her lack of a father figure, she was close to her maternal grandparents, especially to her grandfather Štefan, a Slovene of German origin, and to her grandmother, Zahida, a Bosniak.[citation needed]
After graduating from theUniversity of Southern California,[6] Obreht received aMFA in fiction from the creative writing program atCornell University in 2009.[7]
Obreht's work has appeared inThe New Yorker,Zoetrope: All-Story,Harper's,The New York Times andThe Guardian, and in story anthologies.[8][9]
Among many influences, Obreht has mentioned in press interviews the Colombian novelistGabriel García Márquez, the YugoslavNobel Prize winnerIvo Andrić,Raymond Chandler,Ernest Hemingway,Isak Dinesen, Russian writerMikhail Bulgakov, and the children's writerRoald Dahl.[10]
Obreht is married to the Irish writer Dan Sheehan.[11][12]
The Tiger's Wife was published byWeidenfeld & Nicolson in 2010.[13] It is a novel set in an unnamedBalkan country, in the present and half a century ago, and features a young doctor's relationship with her grandfather and the stories he tells her. These concern a "deathless man" who meets him several times in different places and never grows old, and a deaf-mute girl from his childhood village who befriends a tiger that escaped from a zoo. It was largely written while she was atCornell,[14] and excerpted inThe New Yorker in June 2009.[15] Asked to summarize it by a university journalist, Obreht replied, "It's a family saga that takes place in a fictionalized province of the Balkans. It's about a female narrator and her relationship to her grandfather, who's a doctor. It's a saga about doctors and their relationships to death throughout all these wars in the Balkans."[5]
The Tiger's Wife won the BritishOrange Prize for Fiction in 2011 (for 2010 publications). Obreht was the youngest winner of the annual prize (established 1996), which recognizes "excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing from throughout the world".[16] Late in 2011 she was a finalist for that year's U.S.National Book Award for Fiction.[17]
Inland was published by Penguin Random House in 2019.[18] It is set in the American West in the late 19th century.[19]
Obreht's third novelThe Morningside was published in 2024.[20]
| Year | Title | Award | Category | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | The Tiger's Wife | Dylan Thomas Prize | — | Shortlisted | [21] |
| Galaxy National Book Awards | International Author | Shortlisted | |||
| National Book Award | Fiction | Finalist | |||
| Orange Prize | — | Won | [22] | ||
| Waterstones 11 | — | Selection | [23] | ||
| 2012 | Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence | Fiction | Longlisted | [24] | |
| CBC Bookie Awards | International Fiction | Nominated | |||
| Crawford Award | — | Finalist | [25] | ||
| Indies Choice Book Awards | Adult Debut | Won | |||
| 2020 | Inland | Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence | Fiction | Longlisted | [26] |
| Dylan Thomas Prize | — | Shortlisted | [27][28] | ||
| 2021 | International Dublin Literary Award | — | Longlisted | [29] | |
| Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize | — | Longlisted | [30] | ||
| 2024 | The Morningside | Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize | — | Longlisted | [31] |
| 2025 | Climate Fiction Prize | — | Pending | [32] |
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