Hungry Ghosts

* A BBC TWO BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK FOR 2023 * ‘This shimmering slice of Trinidadian gothic deserves to be a Booker contender . . . [A] sumptuous, brilliantly written novel’ THE TIMES‘An astonishing novel – linguistically gorgeous, narratively propulsive and psychologically profound’ BERNARDINE EVARISTO‘Deeply impressive . . . Energy and inventiveness distinguish every page’ HILARY MANTEL‘The biggest, most frightening, beautiful and alive novel I’ve read in as long as I can remember’ EVIE WYLDA 2023 highlight for: Financial Times * Guardian * Evening Standard * Daily Mail * BBC NewsThe music was still playing when Dalton Changoor vanished into thin air... On a hill overlooking Bell Village sits the Changoor farm, where Dalton and Marlee Changoor live in luxury unrecognisable to those who reside in the farm’s shadow. Down below is the barrack, a ramshackle building of wood and tin, divided into rooms occupied by whole families. Among these families are the Saroops – Hans, Shweta, and their son, Krishna, who live hard lives of backbreaking work, grinding poverty and devotion to faith. When Dalton Changoor goes missing and Marlee’s safety is compromised, farmhand Hans is lured by the promise of a handsome stipend to move to the farm as watchman. But as the mystery of Dalton’s disappearance unfolds their lives become hellishly entwined, and the small community altered forever.Hungry Ghosts is a mesmerising novel about violence, religion, family and class, rooted in the wild and pastoral landscape of 1940s colonial central Trinidad.

Magnificent . . . A tale in the Gothic tradition: think Jean Rhys’s Wide Saragasso Sea or Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy . . . A superlative book that deserves to win prizes, Lush, lyrical . . . If you read it now, you’ll be able to brag about it when it’s on all the literary prize shortlists, The language is as lush, moody and thrilling as the landscape . . . Electrifying, A barnstorming fable about the perils of upward mobility, set in the dog days of colonial rule in the author’s native Trinidad . . . Told with riveting verve, this is a terrific novel, pegged to national as well as domestic strife, peopled by flesh-and blood characters and plotted to keep us on tenterhooks about the story’s pole-axing finale, Hungry Ghosts reads like a Greek tragedy relocated to a gothic Caribbean setting worthy of Jean Rhys — a story of cursed families and inherited vengeance, inexplicable horrors and impossible dreams and a country haunted, as Hosein reminds us, by the ghosts of the indentured . . . [A] sumptuous, brilliantly written novel. An early contender for the Booker? I wouldn’t bet against it

Kevin Jared Hosein is a Caribbean novelist. 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 were longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. His writings have been published in numerous anthologies and outlets. He lives in Trinidad and Tobago.