One of the most-hyped debuts of the year is Hungry Ghosts by the Caribbean author Kevin Jared Hosein. Featuring on many ones-to-watch lists for 2023, it also has plaudits from Bernardine Evaristo, Hilary Mantel and Evie Wyld, who deems it the “the biggest, most frightening, beautiful and alive novel I’ve read in as long as I can remember”. Wyld is a good choice for an endorsement. Her novels have an vibrant, almost feral feel to them, which bears resemblance to Hosein’s writing. His prose is similarly inventive, at times audacious, a noteworthy image on almost every page: “Instinctively, he put his hand on the metal railing. As cold as a quick swipe of antiseptic.”
It’s the kind of writing that’s suited to atmospheric settings. In Hungry Ghosts, Hosein skilfully conjures up the lush, pastoral landscape of colonial 1940s Trinidad: “A persistent wind blew a spiral of foliage across the road. A quintet of kiskadees kept eyes on her from a hog plum tree.” In a book with a busy cast of characters, the focus is on the tiered class system of the region – wealthy landowner Dalton Chandoor and his wife, Marlee; the self-sufficient villagers who form the middle tier; and finally, the inhabitants of the barrack, a rundown building of wood and tin, split into rooms occupied by whole families.
This last group is given prominence by Hosein, through his depiction of one family, the Saroops, Hans and Shweta and their son, Krishna, people who live hard lives of manual labour, poverty and religious devotion. The plot revolves around the kidnapping of Dalton Chandoor by someone in the village and his wife Marlee’s response to this, which is to use her husband’s absence as a way to start an affair with farmhand Hans. Whether Hans will capitulate to her flattery and enticements creates a solid narrative tension, at least for the first half of the book.
Dialogue is slick throughout, the rhythm and cadences of the patois clearly known to the author
Both the kidnapping and affair storylines lose momentum in later parts, with Hosein choosing instead to spend time with other characters – Krishna’s love interest Lata, farmworker Robinson, village boy Dylan, outcast twins Rudra and Rustram – whose current predicaments and dramatic origin stories at times threaten to overwhelm the main narrative arc. Where Hosein excels in his compassion for his characters, in particular the plight of Shweta Saroop: a dead daughter, a husband on the cusp of leaving, a son in danger, and a woman who has no real means or agency to do anything about any of it.
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The many passages of evocative description in Hungry Ghosts are neatly contrasted with the aura of foreboding that underpins the lives of those in the barrack, the sense that someone will have to be sacrificed in order for others to survive. Hosein astutely renders the interiority of his characters as they grapple with such hardships: “She supposed that was the nature of things – sons look to their fathers when they are healthy and to their mothers when they are hurt ... A man in the day and a man in the night is two different creatures.”
Markers of class and cultural signifiers enliven the text, notably with superb descriptions of food: “Worked hard his whole life for a pittance. Enough for a dust of flour from the Chinese merchants, some Bermudez biscuits and a scoop of ghee ... Now in the barrack yard, she had a fire going with baigan choka – mashed eggplants and onions – roasting on a tava.” Dialogue is slick throughout, the rhythm and cadences of the patois clearly known to the author.
[ Golden Child by Claire Adam review: A book with the Midas touchOpens in new window ]
Hosein is a Caribbean novelist and secondary schoolteacher. He was named overall winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2018, and was the Caribbean regional winner in 2015. He has published two books: The Repenters; and The Beast of Kukuyo. The latter received a CODE Burt Award for Caribbean Young Adult Literature, and both had been longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. He is clearly a writer to watch, with his debut novel for adults charting similar territory (quite literally) as Claire Adam’s award-winning debut, Golden Child, from 2019.
There are overtones too of Earl Lovelace’s The Wine of Astonishment, where a small Trinidadian community fight for the right to practise their own religion. The importance of faith – especially to people living in poverty – is a major facet of Hungry Ghosts. Violence and injustice are other central preoccupations, the commonplace nature of both becoming clear as the story progresses. There are wounded animals, dead dogs, body parts that go septic, an environment that seems to turn on its people as they turn on each other. Above all, there is the inequality of a stratified society, best exemplified by Shweta’s prophetic warning to her son: “‘They could touch you, but you have to learn not to feel it.’”
