About: Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer

Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer is a 2012 novel written by author and playwright Cyrus Mistry. Set in pre-Independence era of India, the book is about the Parsi community of corpse bearers who carry the dead bodies for burial in Bombay. The idea for the novel came to Mistry in 1991, when he was researching the subject for a film producer, who wanted to make a documentary on it by Channel 4. The film could not be made so Mistry decided to write it as a novel. Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature in 2014 and the Sahitya Akademi Award for English in 2015.