A sweeping historical novel about a dance-hall girl and an orphan
boy whose fates entangle over an old Chinese superstition about men who
turn into tigers, set in 1930s Malaysia.
Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice
dressmaker, moonlighting as a dancehall girl to help pay off her
mother's Mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally
leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin may finally get the adventure
she has been longing for.
Eleven-year-old houseboy Ren is also on a mission, racing to fulfill his former master's dying wish: that Ren find the man's finger, lost years ago in an accident, and bury it with his body. Ren has 49 days to do so, or his master's soul will wander the earth forever.
As the days tick relentlessly by, a series of unexplained deaths wracks the district, along with whispers of men who turn into tigers. Ji Lin and Ren's increasingly dangerous paths crisscross through lush plantations, hospital storage rooms, and ghostly dreamscapes.
Yangsze Choo's The Night Tiger pulls us into a world of servants and masters, age-old superstition and modern idealism, sibling rivalry and forbidden love. But anchoring this dazzling, propulsive novel is the intimate coming of age of a child and a young woman, each searching for their place in a society that would rather they stay invisible.
400 pages (February 2019)
Book Page at BookBrowse.
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's
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Review from Publishers Weekly
Review from Shelf Awareness
Chapter 1 of The Night Tiger read by the author at a Singaporean bookstore "Meet the Author" event:
This title is available for download as an eBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.
Title Read-alikes: Man Tiger by Eka Kurniawan; Ghost Eater by Frederick Highland; The Garden of Evening Mists by Twan Eng Tan; The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden; Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord; Monstress by Marjorie M. Liu; Empire of Sand Tasha Suri; A Tall History of Sugar by Curdella Forbes; and The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan.
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