Her grandfather retells stories about the "deathless man" who meets him several times in different places and who doesn't die, regardless of the danger he faces; and a deaf-mute girl from his childhood village who befriends a tiger that has escaped from a nearby zoo.

[7] When Obreht was asked to summarize the story by a university journalist, she replied, "It's a family saga that takes place in a fictionalized province of the Balkans.

Simic went on to say, "Téa Obreht is an extraordinarily talented writer, skilled at combining different types of narrative — from objective depiction of events to stories mixing the fabulous and the real — in a way that brings to mind the novels of Mikhail Bulgakov, Gabriel García Márquez, and Milorad Pavić, the Serbian author of Dictionary of the Khazars.

"[15] The New York Times reviewer Liesl Schillinger praised the novel, asserting that it was "filled with astonishing immediacy and presence, fleshed out with detail that seems firsthand.

The annual prize, recognising "excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing from throughout the world", then included £30,000 in cash and the "Bessie", a limited edition bronze figurine.