After a very gory first chapter, Man Tiger settles into a family history that juxtaposes surrealism and the bleak reality of a muddy Indonesian village, in a house where relative poverty and domestic violence are an everyday issue. The narration proceed in meandering ways, with side characters and stories that would deserve their own books, until the hit-you-in-the-stomach finale. Man tiger is a sort of hyper-realistic metaphor for the kind of deep anger and frustration that can bring a man (sic) to kill.