The Night Tiger

The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo was published in 2020. Like Choo's debut novel, The Ghost Bride (2013), The Night Tiger is a mixture of genres, including mythology and historical fiction, and it is a New York Times bestseller. The Night Tiger chronicles the period between May and July of 1931. The setting is colonial-era Malaysia, or “Malaya.”

Plot Summary

Chinese house servant Ren, is a 10-year-old orphan who’s mourning the death of his master, Dr. MacFarlane. Dr. MacFarlane was a weretiger who changed into a tiger at will and would kill villagers and animals at night. On his deathbed, Dr. MacFarlane made Ren promise to find his missing, amputated finger and bury it with his corpse within the next 49 days, or the dangerous weretiger ghost will wander forever.

Ren travels to the Batu Gajah home of Dr. MacFarlane’s friend, William Acton. William is the doctor who amputated Dr. MacFarlane’s finger. Dr. MacFarlane has willed Ren to William; his finger may be in William’s home.

Twenty-year-old Chinese Ji Lin grew up in Ipoh with her mother, violent stepfather, and handsome stepbrother, Shin. Ji Lin now lives in Falim, where she is completing a dressmaking apprenticeship.