Even before the debut of The Tiger’s Wife, Téa Obreht’s freshman novel, the young author was getting literary accolades. Last year, at just 24 years of age, Obreht was named as one of The New Yorker‘s 20 under 40. At the tender age of 23, The Atlantic included her short story The Laugh in their Fiction Issue. This media buzz built up very high expectations for Obreht to deliver a stunning first novel, and judging by most early critical reviews, the young writer has succeeded. The Tiger’s Wife, which will be released on March 8, takes place in an unspecified war-torn Eastern European country, where young doctor Natalia Stefanovi learns of her beloved grandfather’s death. Natalia delves into the circumstances of her grandfather’s passing and reflects on his many mythical stories, including one about a tiger escaping the zoo in 1941 and the deaf-mute that develops a friendship with the beast. By and large, critics have been charmed by Obreht’s rising talent. Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly calls the Belgrade-born author a “Balkan Scheherazade” and describes her literary voice as “so enchanting that the mesmerized reader wants her never to stop.”

In a Q&A with Entertainment Weekly, Obreht discusses her shock at the rush of media hype so early in her career. “I think to some degree, it felt like it was happening to somebody else. It was a big accolade to get, and a really early one. It took a while to sink in. It was shocking for me, in a very good way,” she admits.

She also spoke of the inspiration for the tiger myth in her book. “There were a couple of things that led me to that story. The bombing of the Belgrade Zoo, which actually did happen in 1941 — there are stories of escaped animals — was part of a rich time in the city’s history. People like to look back on it in stories and films, so the notion of escaped animals in the region are taken from reality. The wife was based on an elderly Russian woman I saw in a documentary once who could subdue tigers with her voice. But then, as I was writing, she became a young girl who was deaf-mute. The germ of the idea came from weird places.”