The Hungry Ghosts

Alice Safford, troubled daughter of a leading figure in Hong Kong's colonial government, explores the site of an old army hospital. The "hungry ghost" of a young Chinese girl, murdered during the Island's Japanese occupation 25 years earlier, awaits her in the morgue's shadows. The perfect host for the parasite, Alice returns with the ghost to the family's luxury home on The Peak. Here, the lethal mix of the two, entangled in the Safford family's web of dark secrets and desperate lies, unleashes chaos. As successive tragedies engulf Alice, her ghostly entourage swells alarmingly. She flees to England, then France, in a bid to escape the past, only to find her unwanted spirits have accompanied her. It seems the peace she longs for will prove far more elusive than she could ever have imagined. With its dazzling array of characters, human and spectral, and the numerous twists and turns in their fortunes, The Hungry Ghosts is a rich feast for the imagination, marking the debut of a storyteller of the very highest rank. As she listens to echoes of the past, I slide into her and instantly feel my strength returning. I become the scum in her blood. I garland myself with ropes of silver-stranded veins. And in the resonance of each heartbeat I know her every thought, her every memory, her every experience, her every twist and turn of emotion, often before she does, as if they are my own. --From The Hungry Ghosts