Téa Obreht, the youngest member of The New Yorker's "20 Under 40" list of exceptional writers, brings her studied prose to Elliott Bay Books. It’s easy to be jealous of Obreht, whose style lights up with moments that recall both Love in the Time of Cholera and her own international journey from the Balkans to Egypt and eventually New York.

Her first novel, The Tiger's Wife, ties an imaginative knot out of folklore and war.  Set during the violent 1990s in her native Yugoslavia, the novel follows a young woman who collects stories told to her by her grandfather. Those stories and hers combine, each filled with the maddening superstitions and suspicions that make the chaos around her unreasonable yet understandable.

7:00pm, Mar 16, Elliott Bay Book Co, 1521 10th Ave. Free.