The novel “Lord Tyger” by Philip J. Farmer was published for the first time in 1970.

Ras Tyger is a boy raised in an African jungle among animals, with which he communicates. His infrequent contact with other human beings are with his parents, though they claim they’re apes, and with some members of a tribe that lives in the jungle.

His parents told Ras Tyger that his real father is God but he has never seen him. Instead, occasionally strange giant birds fly above him, sometimes to help him but also to prevent him from going beyond the boundaries of his kingdom. When he tries to get answers, what he gets are other doubts about himself and the environment he lives in.

Philip J. Farmer spent part of his career writing novels in which he rewrote the stories of famous characters from previous literary works. In the case of “Lord Tyger”, he was inspired by the story of Tarzan, one of the author’s favorite characters, who is recreated with the addition of a mystery concerning the protagonist.

Ras Tyger, the new Tarzan, grew up in the jungle in strange circumstances. His adoptive parents are human, but claim they’re apes and growin up he started discovering several strange things that make him want to discover the truth. In particular, he wants to find his real father, who according to his adoptive parents is God.

Philip J. Farmer reinterprets the story of Tarzan in his own way. In several of his novels he included sex and violence and in “Lord Tyger” these elements abound. In this case, it makes sense because Ras Tyger grew up like an animal, even if his adoptive parents have provided some education, at least on certain topics. He had contacts with other human beings but he’s certainly not a civilized person.

“Lord Tyger” is in many ways the record of the protagonist’s sexual adventures with the women of a tribe that lives in the jungle and his deadly battles against the men of that tribe and another group who live farther away. In the course of the novel, however, Ras’s search for the truth about his origins becomes more and more important.

Ras’s adoptive parents have always told him that his real father, God, wants him to live in a realm with precise boundaries, so much that he sends giant birds to make sure that he doesn’t try to escape. To discover the shocking truth, Ras is forced to try to venture outside the boundaries of his world.

“Lord Tyger” is a novel difficult to label. It’s a pastiche as it mimics Tarzan’s story, it’s science fiction story of the alternate history subgenre and obviously it’s an adventure. I think it’s one of those cases where the label is really unimportant and trying to cage this novel witin the boundaries of a single specific genre is limiting.

Philip J. Farmer uses great imagination to include the story of a new Tarzan in a broader framework that the protagonist and the readers progressively discover in the course of the novel. In this sense there’s a kind of deconstruction of the original story by Edgar Rice Burroughs as slowly you can discover elements that don’t add up in Ras Tyger’s life.

Personally I realized that perhaps “Lord Tyger” isn’t exactly my kind of story, although as mentioned above it’s difficult to determine which kind that would be. Maybe my problem is mostly that I’ve seen many television and movie versions of Tarzan’s story so I have long reached a sort of saturation concerning this character or any others inspired to him.

The narrative in “Lord Tyger” is fluid even if the action is peppered with several descriptions of the environment the protagonist lives in. The story is well told even if among the characters Ras Tyger is the only one really developed while the others revolve around him.

Overall, I found “Lord Tyger” pretty good but probably Philip J. Farmer and Tarzan’s fans will like this novel.