Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick, Amazon Spotlight Pick for Best Book of the Month, NYTimes and Publisher's Weekly Bestseller. Braided through with Chinese folklore and a tantalizing mystery, this novel is a page-turner of the highest order. Propulsive and lushly written, The Night Tiger explores colonialism and independence, ancient superstition and modern ambition, sibling rivalry and first love.

Convinced the finger is bad luck, Ji Lin enlists the help of her erstwhile stepbrother to return it to its rightful owner.Īs the 49 days tick down, and a prowling tiger wreaks havoc on the town, Ji Lin and Ren's lives intertwine in ways they could never have imagined. One night, Ji Lin's dance partner leaves her with a gruesome souvenir: a severed finger.

Secretly, though, Ji Lin also moonlights as a dancehall girl to help pay off her beloved mother's Mahjong debts. Ji Lin always wanted to be a doctor, but as a girl in 1930s Malaysia, apprentice dressmaker is a more suitable occupation. Ren has 49 days, or else his master's soul will roam the earth, unable to rest in peace. When 11-year-old Ren's master dies, he makes one last request of his Chinese houseboy: that Ren find his severed finger, lost years ago in an accident, and reunite it with his body. But they certainly will be grabbed.A sweeping historical novel about a dancehall girl and an orphan boy whose fates entangle over an old Chinese superstition about men who turn into tigers.

As it is, readers may not be moved by The Night Tiger. Any probing self-analysis might have resulted in a more plodding novel, one that wouldn’t have been half as entertaining. Conversely, Ji Lin relates her story in the past tense, but neither she nor the reader benefits from hindsight. Ren doesn’t know what is going to happen next, and neither does the reader. Ren’s porous sense of reality (and Choo’s smart use of the present tense) gives his passages a propulsive vitality that grips the reader’s attention. Choo’s skill in creating a dynamic, vibrant, non-Western cosmos rivals that of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Half of a Yellow Sun.

To her credit, Choo manages to ots and subplots with themes of superstition, Confucianism, and the desire for personal fulfillment versus the tug of familial loyalty. Instead, what author Yangsze Choo has given readers is a darn good yarn. The Night Tiger is a galloping good read that’s blessedly free of political polemics and post-colonial self-righteousness.

The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo