In the Eye of the Wild tells the story of the anthropologist Nastassja Martins's nearly fatal run-in with a bear while conducting research in Russia and of the aftermath of the event, of the wounds she took away from it but also of a rebirth in spirit and mind. In her dangerous encounter with the bear, Martin encounters another kind of being altogether, setting off a series of subsequent disasters. She is left severely mutilated and undergoes multiple operations in a provincial Russian hospital, whose ghastly chief surgeon sports a mouthful of gold teeth and presides over a harem of young nurses. Back in France, she comes to the conclusion that she must return to Kamchatka. She must discover what it means to have become, as the Evens call it, a miedka, a person who is not only human but beast.