Someone has been sneaking into Tea Obreht's house and stealing her notes. Actually it's worse than that. Someone has found the door to her private Narnia, and they're selling tickets. "It's very strange. I mean you write alone," she says. "My experience of writing The Tiger's Wife was that I worked from 8 at night til 4 or 6 in the morning, every night. You're in absolute solitude. You've invented this world and you visit it every night and then you go home. And now - people have been extraordinarily generous - when someone says, 'The deathless man was my favourite character, can we talk about that?', my gut reaction is, what? Where have you heard about this? Who gave you my notes?"
Obreht is 25. The Tiger's Wife is her first novel. The novel crept up on her, years before she'd expected to graduate beyond short fiction. It was snapped up for publication. The New Yorker got wind of it, asked to see the manuscript and worked with her to reshape an excerpt for the magazine.

She was subsequently chosen last year as the youngest writer on the New Yorker's much talked about 20 Under 40 list: the magazine's pick of the 20 most promising writers under 40 years old. Reviews of the novel have ranged from positive to raves; sales have been strong; the book recently won Obreht a short-listing for Britain's Orange Prize.
And she has had her first taste of book touring. I ask her if it's been at all off-putting.
"It's been a very difficult thing to get used to, this feeling of exposure. That being said, I've met wonderful booksellers and wonderful readers, and in reality, writing is all I've ever wanted to do. Even if my experience had been worse, and thankfully it hasn't been ... I can't imagine being put off this life. Because to me it's the ultimate."

David Larsen's full piece at NZ Herald.

Tea Obreht will be a star guest at the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival next week.