Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 384 pages
Audiobook Length: 14 hours and 8 minutes
First Published: 2019
View in Goodreads
Buy on Amazon
Publisher’s Description
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 plunges into a dark adventure: a mirror world of secrets and superstitions.
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 racks 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.
Quotes from The Night Tiger
As if fate changes to suit you?
We were a chocolate-box family, I thought. Brightly wrapped on the outside and oozing sticky darkness within.
That’s where the were tigers live, the harriman radian who change their shapes. Some people say that they’re beasts possessed by the souls of dead people.
About Yangsze Choo
Yangsze Choo is the author of two novels, The Ghost Bride and The Night Tiger. She is a fourth generation Malaysian of Chinese descent. She currently lives in California with her husband and children. Visit the author’s website →
Featured In
