About the Author

Cyrus Mistry began his writing career as a playwright, freelance journalist and short-story writer. His play Doongaji House, written in 1977 when he was twenty-one, has acquired classic status in contemporary Indian theatre in English. One of his short stories was made into a Gujarati feature film. His plays and screenplays have won several awards. His novel, Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer (2012), won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, 2014.

Praise for the Book

• “Cyrus Mistry’s new novel shines a light on a little-known segment of the Parsi community. It is brilliant and unsettling.” —Khushwant Singh
• “…Cyrus Mistry has long been known as perhaps the best writer of his generation.” —Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
• “It was really after I wrote the book that I felt for the first time in my writing career that the difficulties of creating a non-linear chronology for a novel was very simply and naturally dispelled.” —Cyrus Mistry in conversation with Time Out Delhi Read more
• “The book forces one to ask, ‘What is love? Sacrifice? A corpse?’, and ‘How does one hold onto faith in the reality of death?’ ” Read more
• ‘[Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer] is a wide-ranging tale and there are things to admire in it’ Read more
• ‘A good read for anyone interested in a compact, intergenerational drama.’ Read more
• ‘Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer is a story of courage and hope, a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story of one man and a nation on the high road of history.’ Read more
• ‘Not many books manage to transport you to a different world. A world that is self-sustained. This despite the characters moving only within a short radius. Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer by Cyrus Mistry surprises you by doing just that.’ Read more
• ‘Peppered with grey humour, irony and tragedy, this well-crafted book is a winner.’ Read more
• ‘Cyrus is a fine literary craftsman who has the power to move us profoundly’ Read more