BOOKS Tiger-inspired tales from around the world

BOOKS NIC BOTTOMLEY

Burning bright

Tiger tales to keep you up at night

“Gradually the edges of dreams, reality and Chinese folklore start to blur”

For no apparent reason, tigerish novels are on my mind. I checked in hope that we had just begun the Chinese Year of the Tiger. But alas, it’s the Year of the Rat. Only I don’t have any recent rat books to describe, so tigers it is. Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo (Quercus, £8.99) is set in 1930s Malaysia, at a time of British colonial infl uence, and involves two narratives set on a collision course. The fi rst features young Ji Lin who, unbeknownst to her parents, is trying to make some muchneeded money for her family by going to a dance hall where the boys pay to dance with the young women. On one particular evening, Ji Lin gets more than she bargained for from her dance partner as he drops something in her pocket – a desiccated severed fi nger. The second thread features a doctor’s house servant called Ren whose master makes him promise on his death-bed to trace his missing fi nger (are you putting two and two together here?). According to local folklore, he must be reunited with his missing body part within 49 days of his death or else his troubled soul will roam the earth forever. And so, as Ren arrives at his new master’s house, he does so as a man with a peculiar and urgent mission.

Ji Lin is a strong character frustrated by the limits of society and is smart as well, so she’s quick to notice when she’s being followed, and quick to attribute this sudden attention to the spare digit she’s carrying around. Whilst she looks over her shoulder and Ren determinedly starts tracing the fi nger, a spate of suspected tiger attacks stir up local legends about tigers who can transform into men and gradually the edges of dreams, reality and Chinese folklore start to blur.

This melding of the human and the animal, and specifi cally, the tiger, brings to mind an excellent book for middle grade and teen readers by Linda Coggin, The Boy with Tiger’s Heart (Hot Key, £5.99). In this fable-like story a girl is raised fi rst by wolves and then by an eccentric human guardian who keeps wild animals. Nona (for “no name”) is forced to fl ee her fi rst human home when her guardian is murdered and she, his wild companion, becomes a prime suspect – particularly as she had touched the weapon that she found beside his body. She is accompanied on her hasty retreat back into the wild forests by an aff ectionate, almost human-like, bear named Abel Dancer and they soon encounter two boys, Caius and then Jay, a boy with wild instincts who seems to operate nocturnally and whose eyes have a ferocious light. The brilliant back stories of the boys are slowly revealed whilst the unlikely quartet are pursued through the jungle in an action-packed quest to reach a place known as ‘The Edge’ – an area of outer forest rumoured to lie behind a forbidding wall and to be a place where nature can roam truly free.

In this column’s long tradition of tenuous links, I thought I’d say a little about Aravind Adiga’s new novel. There’s nothing whatsoever here about tigers but of course Adiga fi rst made his name by winning The Booker Prize for his debut novel White Tiger, which also contains no tigers, now I think about it.

Anyway, to his new novel Amnesty (Macmillan, £16.99), which follows Danny, an illegal immigrant from Sri Lanka, making his way in Sydney, Australia. When we meet Danny he’s working as a cleaner and obsessively trying to be invisible to Australians. He has died his hair blonde, adopted an accent and simply tries to assimilate and blend in as much as possible to defl ect from his illegal status.

But when Danny learns that a woman in a nearby block of fl ats has been murdered and that she is one of his cleaning clients, he becomes obsessed over whether to get involved. On the one hand he has a theory as to who the culprit might be; but on the other hand his main concern is staying completely below the radar of the authorities – which he worries will now be impossible because his number is in the victim’s phone.

Cue a moral dilemma and a mystery, unravelling in a single day, that simultaneously gives insight into the many layers and complexities of migrancy. Danny is a fantastic character with a compelling voice and a moral code that might just get him into a world of trouble.

Nic Bottomley is the general manager of Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights, 14/15 John Street, Bath; 01225 331155; www.mrbsemporium.com