| One Day as a Tiger | |
| Author: | Anne Haverty |
| Cover Artist: | Jeremy Walker |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Publisher: | Chatto & Windus |
| Release Date: | March 1997 |
| Media Type: | |
| Isbn: | 0-7011-6628-2 |
| Awards: | Rooney Prize for Irish Literature |
One Day as a Tiger is the first novel by Irish author Anne Haverty. Published in 1997 it was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award that year[1] and won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.[2]
As explained in the preface to the book, the title comes from a Tibetan proverb:
It is better to have lived one day as a tiger than a thousand years as a sheep.
After the death of his parents in a road accident as they travelled to visit him, Marty leaves his academic career at Trinity College, Dublin and returns to the family farm in County Tipperary, where he has an uncertain relationship with his brother Pierce, and becomes increasingly infatuated by Etti, his sister-in-law. Marty also finds his heart moved by Missy, a genetically engineered sheep who refuses to associate with the rest of the flock and enjoys "music, porridge and laconic stories".[3] Eventually Etti and Marty travel to France with Missy in order to ensure her future at the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals, but they only get as far as Deauville.