Shivan’s grandmother’s issues come with her material success. While the novel ranges over decades of time, The Hungry Ghost portrays a series of attempts by people trying to make things better (the hungry ghost’s desire to eat) and only making things worse with each effort. In their own way, the three generations represented in the novel all “desire too much” and each time they reach out to satisfy that desire (or hope) they only achieve more frustration and agony, adding a personal requirement for atonement to those of their ancestors which already are part of their burden. The peréthayas that appear to us are always our ancestors, and it is our duty to free them from their sufferings by feeding Buddhist monks and transferring the merit of that deed to our dead relatives.

In Sri Lankan myth, a person is reborn a peréthaya because, during his human life, he desired too much - hence the large stomach that can never be filled through the tiny mouth.

For years, the anguish of that dream would continue into her day, because my mother believed she had caused his death by her anger and there was no way to beg his forgiveness, or at least reach some companionable peace with him. He just stands, staring at her, caught between worlds. The yellowed flesh of his face is seared to his skull, his mouth no larger than the eye of a needle, so he can never satisfy his hunger. He is reborn as a peréthaya, a hungry ghost, with stork-like limbs and an enormous belly that he must prop up with his hands. In it, she encounters him at my grandmother’s gate or standing by a pillar on the verandah or sometimes outside the market. My mother recently told me that she still dreams of her husband, the same dream she has had since his death. Its presence is over-arching in the novel with versions affecting all three generations represented in the story so it is worth quoting the author’s introduction, as drawn from the memory of Shivan Rassiah, the narrator and central character of the book: Review copy courtesy Doubleday CanadaThe “hungry ghost” that supplies the title for Shyam Selvadurai’s new novel is the peréthaya, a creature that appears in a number of Buddhist and Sri Lankan myths.

The hungry ghosts by shyam selvadurai