In 'The Night Tiger,' Fantastic Beasts Of Colonial Malaysia
Yangsze Choo's second novel features a disembodied finger, Chinese dancehalls of the 1930s and weretigers. For the author, it's a book of parallel worlds: the supernatural and the real.
It's not just the finger of fate that brings Ren and Ji Lin together. It's a finger.
Ren is an 11-year-old houseboy at the deathbed of his master, Dr. MacFarland, who takes a last breath to ask the boy to find the finger amputated from the doctor years before, and to return it to him in his grave within 49 days before his soul disappears.
Ji Lin is a dancehall girl and dressmaker's assistant in 1930s Malaya who has a sudden gift pressed into her hand during a dance: a
