The boy bends his cropped head closer.A captivating and magical story set in 1930s Malaysia about a dancehall girl and an orphan boy who are brought together by a series of unexplained deaths and an old Chinese superstition about men who turn into tigers. The old man opens his watery blue eyes, those colorless foreign eyes that had frightened Ren so much in the beginning, and whispers something. Ren remembers how just a few months ago that hand could still calm babies and suture wounds. Sunlight emphasizes the tremor of his hand with its ugly stump of a missing finger. He moves to shield his master with his shadow, but the old man stops him with a gesture. Outside is a brilliant sea of green: the waving tops of jungle trees and a blue sky like a fever dream. Irritably, he beckons the boy over, and Ren, his throat tight as though he's swallowed a stone, throws open the second-story window. Ren can see it in the shallow breaths, the sunken face, and the skin stretched thinly over his cheekbones. 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. 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. Ji Lin and Ren's increasingly dangerous paths crisscross through lush plantations, hospital storage rooms, and ghostly dreamscapes. Ren has 49 days to do so, or his master's soul will wander the earth forever.Īs the days tick relentlessly by, a series of unexplained deaths wracks the district, along with whispers of men who turn into tigers.

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.Įleven-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.

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.

The night tiger book