Hungry Ghosts
Chaguanas-born Trinidadian author Kevin Jared Hosein’s novel Hungry Ghosts (Bloomsbury Publishing Feb 2023) has been longlisted for one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world–the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Hosein’s novel has been described by celebrated historical writer, the late Hilary Mantel, as “deeply impressive”, and Bernardine Evaristo, president of the Royal Society of Literature, called his historical novel “linguistically gorgeous”.
The prize was founded in 2009 and is traditionally awarded at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, Scotland, in June every year. The winner receives £25,000, and shortlisted authors each receive £1,500. The shortlist for the prize will be announced in May and the winner in June 2024.
Hosein shared the Walter Scott longlist link on his Facebook page on February 22 by calling the news “incredible”, and adding his book was with “massive company”. The 2024 judging panel includes Katie Grant (chair), James Holloway, Elizabeth Laird, James Naughtie, Kirsty Wark and Saira Shah.
In a press release announcing the longlist, the chair of Judges, Katie Grant, said: “This year’s longlist sweeps us from one end of the world to the other and from the Dark Ages to the twentieth century–almost a millennium-and-a-half. Along the way, we hear tales of fifteenth-century Norwich and of the Highland Clearances of the 1800s; of the secret railroad through the Americas during the mid-nineteenth century and of forbidden love in London at the turn of the twentieth; from tropical Jamaica to Japan and Korea in the late 1800s, and to sultry Penang as the twentieth-century dawns; onwards to Trinidad, to Rome, to Crete and to New Zealand during the Second World War years; and to London and Paris in the swinging 1960s when anything seems possible.
“In each book, emotions run deep from the epic to the intimate, from the philosophical to the swashbuckling, and from the traditional to the experimental. If you read the whole list, just like the panel of judges, you’ll never be short of conversation. Longlisted authors this year encompass a range of nationalities, including Australian, British, Canadian, Irish, Malaysian and Trinidadian.” The Walter Scott Prize is sponsored by the Duke of Buccleuch, and “celebrates quality, innovation and ambition of writing.”
In 2022, Trinidadian/Irish writer Amanda Smyth’s novel Fortune (Peepal Tree Press), based in Trinidad in the 1920s, was shortlisted for the prestigious prize. An early review of Hungry Ghosts by Teresa White in The Sunday Guardian described Hosein’s novel set in barracks in 1940s Trinidad. “If traditional Trinidadian working-class narratives take place in the East Dry River yard (The Dragon Can’t Dance and Moon on a Rainbow Shawl come immediately to mind), Hungry Ghosts takes place in the shared space of the Caroni Plain barrack room.
The emerging themes are similar: hunger, desire, ambition and the complete absence of privacy. But the exposed Central landscape lays humanity poignantly bare: “Here, the snakes’ calls blurred with the primaeval hiss of wind through the plants. Picture en plein air, all shades of green with vermillion soaked with red and purple and ochre. Picture what the good people call fever grass, wild caraille, shining bush, timaries, tecomarias, bois gris, bois canot, christophene, chenette, moko, moringa, pommerac, pommecythere, barbadine, barthar. Humanity as ants on the Savannah.”
Hosein’s previous books, The Repenters and The Beast of Kukuyo were longlisted by the International Dublin Literary Award. The Beast of Kukuyo won a CODE Burt Award for Caribbean Young Adult Literature. Earlier this year Hosein was longlisted for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize.
In 2022, Trinidadian/Irish writer Amanda Smyth’s novel Fortune (Peepal Tree Press), based in Trinidad in the 1920s, was shortlisted for the prestigious prize.
Ira Mathur is a Guardian Media writer and the 2023 Non-Fiction Bocas Prize for Literature winner. www.irasroom.org
The 12 novels in contention for the £25,000 prize are:
THE NEW LIFE Tom Crewe (Chatto & Windus)
A BETTER PLACE Stephen Daisley (Text Publishing)
HUNGRY GHOSTS Kevin Jared Hosein (Bloomsbury)
FOR THY GREAT PAIN, HAVE MERCY ON MY LITTLE PAIN Victoria MacKenzie (Bloomsbury)
MUSIC IN THE DARK Sally Magnusson (John Murray)
CUDDY Benjamin Myers (Bloomsbury)
MY FATHER’S HOUSE Joseph O’Connor (Harvill Secker)
THE FRAUD Zadie Smith (Hamish Hamilton)
MISTER TIMELESS BLYTH Alan Spence (Tuttle)
THE HOUSE OF DOORS Tan Twan Eng (Canongate)
IN THE UPPER COUNTRY Kai Thomas (Penguin Canada)
ABSOLUTELY AND FOREVER Rose Tremain (Chatto & Windus)