Hungry Ghosts

December 5, 2022
Hosein (The Beast of Kukuyo) sets this thorny literary thriller in the divided Trinidad of the mid-1940s. Eccentric landowner Dalton Changoor’s fortune is tied to an unspecified criminal enterprise. His wife, Marlee, doesn’t have the details but can pick up the vibe, as “the kind of money that Dalton brought in seemed flecked with blood.” When Dalton goes missing, Marlee worries he’s been killed, and wonders who did it. Then, after receiving a ransom note, she wonders “what would happen if she didn’t care to pay.” As the kidnappers try to intimidate Marlee by prowling around the property at night, Marlee asks one of the farmhands, Hans, to guard the house. Hans has spent his life in abject poverty in the barrack alongside his wife, Shweta; their two sons; and five other families. Shweta is desperate to leave the barrack, and Marlee’s offer comes with enough money to help them buy their own plot of land. Though a deluge of detail bogs down the pacing, Hosein imbues the proceedings with the swelter of subtropical noir, and entwines his class and colonial commentary with Hans and Marlee’s fraught arrangement, as Marlee becomes financially desperate and Hans gets a taste for a better life. Patient readers will find plenty of rewards in this complex tale. Agent: Chris Wellbelove, Aitken Alexander Assoc.