Hungry Ghosts: A BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club Pick

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The only thing I wish was that he had a dictionary for the words native to Trinidad. For instance, (I know Jamaican patois very well) a Duppy and a Jumbie are the same, just different cultures. However! Being from NYC, that's a word I'm highly familiar with. But there was a lot that I had to look up because they were more proper in tone. Just a guess! As I said, I listened to my ex speak Jamaican Patois for 35 years. Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein review — cursed families and killer cherries". The Times. 3 February 2023.

Gave his son a smile. ‘We gon get that Popular Mechanics then.’ Hans turned to his nephew. ‘What you want from in there, Tarak?’ Hans stopped before a two-storey building with a wide blue awning, the front fitted with immaculate glass. On one of the panes was the name of the store fitted into a bold half-moon: SALLOUM’S BAZAAR. The store had opened only a week ago and was supposed to be the new cornerstone of imported goods. Thanks for championing Hungry Ghosts, David, Mohamed, Wendy, Gumble, Paul and everyone else too! I think you all believed in it for the Booker more than I did (my agent is probably as upset as Gumble -- for he is a good agent!) Living and writing from a country that barely supports literature and has almost no real bookshops and only one substantial library, even being predicted for the longlist is a long way to be. I'm sorry Derek missed out as well. Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein, review: This electric portrait of Trinidad deserves to win major prizes The novel is set in the rural past of the 1940s when Trinidad is on the cusp of reincarnation as a post-colonial entity This is the Trinidadian writer’s first novel for adults and will surely win him praise and accoladesThe plot pivots on Dalton Changoor’s disappearance, which prompts Marlee to pay Hans extra to keep watch overnight – money Hans wants to buy his family a plot of land for a house in Bell. Shweta realises, too late, she never “exactly agreed” to Hans taking the post. There isn’t a dud moment or misplaced word. Hosein – a biology teacher who writes poems and stories by night – has a poet’s gift for similes (“the dawnlight appeared as a single painted fingernail hoisting itself over the mountain range, glowing hot and focused as a soldering iron”). But his writing is at its electric best when the weather is as stormy as his characters’ emotions. An intriguing read that forces us to confront the harsh realities of life and its varying juxtapositions of violence and beauty, love and hate, faith and despair.”— BookBrowse Rich in vocabulary and description, the novel situates characters in a meticulously detailed setting that evokes Middlemarch, with a similar empathy for human struggle...In scope and style, it’s not far off a masterpiece." — Financial Times Hosein... sensitively teases apart the tangled web of class and religion and emphasizes the hard choices the powerless routinely live with." — Booklist (starred review)

Triggers include violence, sexual assault, animal cruelty, child death, extreme poverty, racism, and bullying. The water so murky now that all the outlines were obscured. ‘This paddy is a big waste of time,’ said Krishna, shaking his head. This is an account of dark, bleak, violent humanity, riven by injustice of class, race, religion, gender, with graphic accounts of killings, beatings and maimings of humans and animals. There is little, if any, hope to be found here. Caster Semenya’s The Race to Be Myself made me gasp 31 October, 2023 Fantasy books used to bore me - my kids changed my mind 30 October, 2023 Opinion | Jilly Cooper will never be too old to write sex scenes 27 October, 2023 Hungry Ghosts is an astonishing book—linguistically gorgeous, narratively propulsive, and psychologically profound." — Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, OtherIt was a time that was like the American wild west, it seemed like nobody was in charge. British colonial rule was loosening and there was a transfer of power, which came with its own problems, like cronyism. The American navy was also here, so you had these two superpowers on the island. It was almost as though Trinidad was starting to be reborn. Before the Bocas festival, the literary scene in Trinidad was a wasteland

Both a family drama and an acute study of social structure...A highly recommended story of family and class divides that will break readers’ hearts." — Library Journal Krishna stood watching her, lost in thought until Tarak hit his shoulder. ‘Stop daydreamin. Let’s go.’ He is also the author of three works of fiction for young adults: Littletown Secrets, The Beast of Kukuyo and The Repenters. Littletown Secrets, his first book to be published, which he both wrote and illustrated in 2013, was awarded the title of Best Children's Book of 2013, by the Trinidad Guardian. [6] It was followed by The Repenters (2016), which was shortlisted for the Bocas Prize and longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and the OCM Bocas Prize. [1] [9] His 2018 book, The Beast of Kukuyo, won second place for the Burt Award for Caribbean literature. [1]I have to say that throughout I was willing something good to come from something bad but that might be simply because I am an optimist. Either way the triggering event of Changoor's disappearance is the catalyst for all the other problems and tragedies that occur. The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother. Hungry Ghosts is a mesmerising novel about violence, religion, family and class, rooted in the wild and pastoral landscape of 1940s colonial central Trinidad. Tarak narrowed his eyes at Addy, another spasm in his shoulders. Krishna put a hand on his shoulder, trying to calm the boy’s laboured breathing. He remembered what his father had once told him – that you cannot let your enemies know you’re angry. They’ll know what’s coming if you do that.