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

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A deeper layer means that there are lessons to be learned, especially if these are folktales. I'll say that they are 2, to be exact. 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. Themes of class, inequality, friendship, death, family relationships are dealt with in ways that open up discussion and debate. This novel has so much depth. The war mentality represents an unfortunate confluence of ignorance, fear, prejudice, and profit. ... The ignorance exists in its own right and is further perpetuated by government propaganda. The fear is that of ordinary people scared by misinformation but also that of leaders who may know better but are intimidated by the political costs of speaking out on such a heavily moralized and charged issue. The prejudice is evident in the contradiction that some harmful substances (alcohol, tobacco) are legal while others, less harmful in some ways, are contraband. This has less to do with the innate danger of the drugs than with which populations are publicly identified with using the drugs. The white and wealthier the population, the more acceptable is the substance. And profit. If you have fear, prejudice, and ignorance, there will be profit.”

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

I know authors are supposed to erect obstacles for their characters and to keep placing these up. But in this book, the barriers and challenges provided nothing redeeming, consoling, or educational (or remotely satisfying). There was no resolution for the main character, Shivan. From the latin word vulnerare, ‘to wound’, vulnerability is our susceptibility to be wounded. This fragility is part of our nature and cannot be escaped. The best the brain can do is to shut down conscious awareness of it when pain becomes so vast or unbearable that it threatens to overwhelm our capacity to function. The automatic repression of painful emotions is a helpless child’s prime defence mechanism and can enable the child to endure trauma that would otherwise be catastrophic. The unfortunate consequence is a wholesale dulling of emotional awareness. ‘Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression,’ wrote the American novelist Saul Bellow in The Adventures of Augie March; ‘if you hold down one thing you hold down the adjoining.’ It’s rare that a title sums up a book as succinctly as Hungry Ghosts, Trinidadian writer Kevin Jared Hosein’s magnificent first novel for adults. The question is never “Why the addiction?” but “Why the pain?” The research literature is unequivocal: most hard-core substance abusers come from abusive homes.” Shyam Selvadurai’s novels are sad. They’re difficult to read. However, they are beautiful and heart-wrenching stories that portray realistic situations and people’s reactions to these events.A dissection of class, disloyalty, extreme poverty, colonialism, generational trauma, abuse, explosive barbarity, (disclaimer: if you can’t handle reading about violence against animals, don’t go here). The form is not innovative, but the setting of 1940s Trinidad and Tobago is so unusual that it all feels very fresh. Kevin Jared Hosein's title Hungry Ghosts has its origin in Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism. According to the Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, hungry ghost, or preta"literally means 'one who has gone away from here' and is used to indicate the disembodied spirit of a dead person, especially during the first ten days after death." The word is also used to refer to a ghost, generally the spirit of a great sinner, whose unfulfilled desire or hunger compels it to wander in search of satiety, straddling the worlds of the living and the dead. There is a lot of strong themes happening in the book and generally that is hard for an author to explore each and do it justice but Hosein was able to do it expertly. We had coming-of-age, love, poverty, classism, religion and racism well explored- each leaving you with food for thought. I also loved how truly authentic the book felt- you were taken to the island of Trinidad and Tobago during the 1940s and you feel that through the writing and research done. More broadly, though, it's an exploration of the workings of karma, of how the sins of our past supposedly follow us through this and future lives unless we make amends. The book is well-written and offers suspense, mystery and romance, but the Buddhist parables woven into the narrative were problematic.

the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with

Hungry Ghosts opens with four boys doing a blood pact that will make them brothers for the rest of their lives. Do they know what this pact means? How will it impact their individual lives? That is exactly what we find out in this book. This message about the dangers of ambition, of trying to rise above one's station, should be relegated to the bad old days and not retold except as an example of how religious and social structures are often used by ruling classes to keep those they are oppressing from rising up and demanding equality. We may not be responsible for another’s addiction or the life history that preceded it, but many painful situations could be avoided if we recognized that we are responsible for the way we ourselves enter into the interaction. And that, to put it most simply, means dealing with our own stuff.” I being a ksatriya pretender stopped her in the wilderness, became a wayside robber and took her viaticum with clothes along with the dress of her son. I wrapped them around my head and wanted to leave. I saw the little boy drinking water from a jar. In that wilderness, only that much water was there.

Book Summary

The Hungry Ghosts has some minor microagressions. Nevertheless, I still recommend this novel as it was a great book. I enjoyed reading the retellings of Buddhist stories. I hadn’t read them before, so this was a lovely addition to my reading experience.

Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein: Summary and reviews Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein: Summary and reviews

Boy, oh funny boy, how radically different was this! That's a feat sure but not if you are expecting something specific. This was Arundhati-Roy-in-her-second-novel- level different. Are you sure you are you, Shyam? level different.Methods for gaining self-knowledge and self-mastery through conscious awareness strengthen the mind’s capacity to act as its own impartial observer. Among the simplest and most skilful of the meditative techniques taught in many spiritual traditions is the disciplined practice of what Buddhists call ‘bare attention’. Nietzsche called Buddha ‘that profound physiologist’ and his teachings less a religion than a ‘kind of hygiene’...’ Many of our automatic brain processes have to do with either wanting something or not wanting something else – very much the way a small child’s mental life functions. We are forever desiring or longing, or judging and rejecting. Mental hygiene consists of noticing the ebb and flow of all those automatic grasping or rejecting impulses without being hooked by then. Bare attention is directed not only toward what’s happening on the outside, but also to what’s taking place on the inside.