Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein (Book Review by Stacey Lorenson)

Book Rating: 3.2

Books about the Caribbean Islands are usually romanticized. Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein is the complete opposite of this cliche. Hosein creates an unapologetic slice of post-colonial island life through graphic and emotional juxtapositions of classism and economic disparity during the 1940’s in Trinidad.

Hungry Ghosts encompasses two families from opposing economic spectrums trying to recreate their identities independent of their traumatic pasts. Hosein weaves Trinidadian folklore with religious ideology as he examines the deep psychological scars of intergenerational trauma. The novel bounces between the two polar opposite worlds of the Saroop family and the wealthy Changoor farm. Poverty and wealth simultaneously separate and bind the two families as they struggle to survive while searching for new identities that will transport them to better lives.

Hansraj and Shweta Saroop live in a settlement called the barracks, a ten-by-ten space shared with four other families and their children. The children of the barracks, Hans and Shweta’s son Krishna, his friends Tarak, Rustam and Rudra, attempt to translate the hypocrisy of their world while desperately carving out a future independent of their descendants’ legacies. Dalton and Marlee Changoor, employ Hans who becomes entwined with the mystery of Daltons eventual disappearance disrupting these two families, causing irreparable consequences as they attempt to escape the Hungry Ghosts from their past.