Cameron Wright's The Rent Collector is about a family that lives in a trash dump. They make money finding and selling recycled goods like many other people around. When the husband (Ki Lim) gets attacked, all of his money is stolen and he must go to the clinic. When their rent collector comes to collect rent, they are unable to pay. The rent collector says he will evict them until he sees a child's book on the ground and decides not to evict them.
Since the rent collector is the only one in that village the knows how to teach a child how to read, the family in poverty asks him to teach their daughter. He agrees, but on two conditions: the daughter must study very hard and the family must buy him a bottle of alcohol each week.
The daughter of the family soon falls gravely ill, so the reading classes soon stop. When the child is healthy again, though, they resume their lessons. When the family sees the rent collector drinking many bottles of beer before the lessons, the family thinks about confronting him but then decide against it.
This whole book focuses on poverty and terrible and not comfortable lives the characters live.
