Her two central characters inhabit the same body. In the opening pages, Lin Shui is raped and killed by a Japanese soldier during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in the second world war. She becomes a ghost haunting an abandoned army hospital for 25 years until Alice Safford, the lonely daughter of a senior British civil servant, appears.

The ghost possesses Alice and narrates much of the book. The point of view is shared by many characters, though not Alice, who runs away from her troubled family to England and France before returning to Hong Kong as a middle-aged woman in 2007.

As her misfortunes increase, Alice becomes the host for a cabal of grotesque ghosts. The novel accelerates from a study of colonial personality types with a hint of Oriental mysticism to a genre approaching science fiction.

Berry admits the novel reflects her interest in the supernatural. Hong Kong, she says, gave her an appreciation of ancestral worship and a sense of life and death as a 'continuous circle'.

'I wouldn't call it supernatural; for me it's natural,' she says. 'It really rubbed off on me in Hong Kong - this idea of the living in the blood, that all this is a part of living. You had all these festivals in Hong Kong that celebrated ancestors. I felt extremely comfortable with the idea of the dead being part of the living and there being death in life and life in death.'

The novel also draws from her own story as the daughter of Nigel Watt, a former television commissioner who was a prominent figure during the 1967 riots.

Berry moved from England to Aden, Yemen, as a baby before arriving in Hong Kong at the age of five in 1961. She returned to Britain in 1974 to study drama but came back to Hong Kong as an adult; her time here included working as a journalist for the South China Morning Post.

Like Alice, Berry still struggles with the question of her British identity - and whether she has any choice now that the Hong Kong of her youth is unrecognisable. Her 'loosely autobiographical' novel finds its freshest territory in her expatriate characters' shifting grasp of Hong Kong as a home in which they no longer belong.

'Returning to England was the most extraordinary experience,' says Berry. 'As a child, I was less prepared for it than my parents, who had a past in England. We were conscious we were British but Britain was a foreign country. The first two or three years were really traumatic. I didn't understand the English people. I didn't understand the British sense of humour. British people are far more conservative, they don't show a lot of emotion. That was quite difficult.'

Hong Kong remained with Berry, she says, as a career in theatre took shape in England. She toured with a company as an actress until life as a mother of three led her to settle down as a drama teacher. She wrote more than 30 plays while running a drama school. 'After I'd finished that, the voices in my head became so insistent that I just had to write this book full time,' she says.

'I always wanted to write and I knew my first book would be about Hong Kong, because Hong Kong is in my blood. All my formative years were spent there.

'This book has been burning away all my life. The very first seed of this book goes back to being a child in Hong Kong and looking out over this fascinating island.

'The moment that was pivotal for me was going to a friend's house at Peak Mansions when I was eight or nine. My friend's mother said to me that their flat was haunted. She called it a poltergeist, not a ghost, and she thought it was a young girl who'd been murdered during the Japanese occupation. She moved things around and slammed doors. They'd seen her once or twice.

'I never forgot it. That character stayed with me all these years. The narrator started at that moment.'

Berry's theatrical background prepared her for writing a novel with multiple points of view. The refusal to let Alice become one of the narrators came from her experience as a reader. 'At the very beginning [of the writing] a few characters came to me. One thing was very clear almost immediately: of all the characters in the book I did not want to give Alice a voice,' she says. 'I wanted the reader to have their own Alice. I felt that there was something really rather lovely in a reader putting together a picture of Alice.'

The character remains silent as trauma, misfortune and spite kick her around the world. The closest we come to her motives are three letters she writes to her estranged mother and the ghost who sees through her eyes. Berry trusts the reader to inhabit her character. 'Giving Alice a voice would have limited the book. The imagination of readers is infinite. Leaving Alice without a voice leaves her open to the more creative business of reading a book.'

After more than 30 rejections from literary agents and publishers, Berry became the first author published by Blue Door, a new HarperCollins imprint. 'Publishing is an incredibly difficult world to break into. There were times when you'd have to peel me off the floor I was so disheartened. But I don't think I had a choice. I didn't choose to write. I just had to.'

A second novel is finished and a third, possibly about Hong Kong, is taking shape.

'I would like to set another book in Hong Kong. But I want to give it a little space first. I want it to be completely fresh. Visually, Hong Kong has never left me.'

Writer's notes

Name: Anne Berry

Age: 53

Born: England. Moved to Aden, Yemen, as a baby. Lived in Hong Kong 1961-74

Lives: England Family: married with three adult children

Other jobs: journalist for South China Morning Post, actress, drama teacher, playwright

Latest book: The Hungry Ghosts (Blue Door, 2009)

Current project: Two more novels, one of which may be set in Hong Kong

What the papers say: 'This is a novel as breezy as the best summer reads, yet secrets and deadly jealousy seethe at its dark core ... Each chapter is narrated by a different character, lending this engrossing novel an apt restlessness.' The Daily Mail 'The book is not easy, and you do not warm to the characters - I felt sorry for Alice, but I did not really understand her ... this is a dazzling and assured debut from Anne Berry and an encouraging choice from new imprint Blue Door.' Bookbag 'I found myself hoping that a tidal wave would sweep the darn tome out of my hands and give me a good excuse to not finish it. The writing is wonderful, the background lush and unusual, the characters unique, the story powerful. It's just that what with everybody apart from poor Alice being so thoroughly awful, a reader could lose the will to live.' New Zealand Woman's Weekly