THE HUNGRY GHOSTS

A beautifully written, dazzling story of family, wealth and the long reach of the past. It shows how racial, political and sexual differences can tear apart both a country and the human heart—not just once, but many times, until the ghosts are fed and freed.

In Buddhist myth, the dead may be reborn as "hungry ghosts"—spirits with stomach so large they can never be full—if they have desired too much during their lives. It is the duty of the living relatives to free those doomed to this fate by doing kind deeds and creating good karma. In Shyam Selvadurai's sweeping new novel, his first in more than a decade, he creates an unforgettable ghost, a powerful Sri Lankan matriarch whose wily ways, insatiable longing for land, houses, money and control, and tragic blindness to the human needs of those around her parallels the volatile political situation of her war-torn country. The novel centres around Shivan Rassiah, the beloved grandson, who is of mixed Tamil and Sinhalese lineage, and who also—to his grandmother's dismay—grows from beautiful boy to striking gay man. As the novel opens in the present day, Shivan, now living in Canada, is preparing to travel back to Colombo, Sri Lanka, to rescue his elderly and ailing grandmother, to remove her from the home—now fallen into disrepair—that is her pride, and bring her to Toronto to live our her final days. But throughout the night and into the early morning hours of his departure, Shivan grapples with his own insatiable hunger and is haunted by unrelenting ghosts of his own creation. The Hungry Ghosts, like Selvadurai's previous work, explores themes of migration, sexuality and family, and brings vividly to life the smell, colours, landscape, manners and customs of his native Sri Lanka. SHYAM SELVADURAI was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He came to Canada with his family at the age of nineteen. Funny Boy, published to immediate acclaim in 1994, was a national bestseller, and won the W. H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award and, in the US, The Lambda Literary Award, and was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association. Cinnamon Gardens was shortlisted for the Trillium Award. It has been published in the US, the UK, India, and numerous countries in Europe. Swimming in the Monsoon Sea was Nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award in 2005.