SOURCE: A review of Feeding the Ghosts, in World Literature Today, Vol. 73, No. 4, Autumn, 1999, p. 796.

In the following review of Feeding the Ghosts, Beck finds D'Aguiar's evocation of the slave trade interesting but unexceptional.

In 1781 a fatal malady broke out on the slave ship Zong, killing seven crew members and many of the slaves. Fearing that sick slaves would lose all their value in Jamaica, Captain Cunningham commanded very ill slaves to be thrown overboard, in order to collect insurance on their deaths and to prevent the plague from spreading further on the ship. In a court trial in Liverpool, brought by the insurers against the investors, the judge sided with the investors, confirming once more the law that Africans are only “stock” to be bought and sold.

The main character in Fred D'Aguiar's latest novel is Mintah, a young African woman who had been taught English in...