Poet Ruth Padel’s remarkable travelogue blends prose with a personal diary, poems, lists and maps. It plays on so many angles that it’s sometimes hard to figure out whether it’s an awareness raising book or a tiger enthusiast’s private diary. Padel’s journey through 11 Asian countries begins in Kerala, India and takes in the forests of Siberia, the hermit Kingdom of Bhutan and the jungles of Sumatra. Central to her journey is her quest for tigers, an endangered species which has captured mankind’s imagination throughout the ages. Padel’s descriptions of her excursions in search of Panthera tigris are both captivating and educational. Not since Sandy Balfour’s Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose has an author so deftly weaved a personal memoir with a leitmotif (crosswords in Balfour’s case, tigers for Padel).
Time Warner Book Group UK

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
November 2005 issue