A group of friends journey to a remote part of West Khasi Hills, in northeast India, to witness the performance of an ancient Lyngngam funeral ceremony that lasts six days. Concluding with the cremation of a beloved elder, a woman whose body has been preserved in a tree house for nine whole months, this may well be the last time Ka Phor Sorat, the feast of the dead, is performed.
By mistake, however, the group arrives early. So they wait, stuck in the jungle, spending their nights around a fire in the middle of a spacious hut built for them especially, sharing stories in what proves an unexpected journey of discovery.
Funeral Nights is a vast collection of tales both big and small, less about death than it is about life in all forms. It teems with admirable men and women, raconteurs and pranksters, lovers and fools, politicians and conmen, drunks and taxi drivers; it abounds with culture, history, gods, religions, myths and legends. Inspired by Boccaccio’s Decameron and The Arabian Nights, this is intimate access to a whole world, spectacular in its documentation of a tribe’s life and culture, and lush, warm, and entirely delightful in its telling.
About the author
Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, born in Sohra, India, writes poetry, drama and fiction in Khasi and English. His latest works include The Distaste of the Earth: A Novel, The Yearning of Seeds: Poems, Time’s Barter: Haiku and Senryu and Around the Hearth: Khasi Legends. He has published poems and stories in Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, Wasafiri, New Welsh Review, PEN International, Literary Review, Oxford Anthology of Writings from Northeast India and more. His awards include the Northeast Poetry Award (2004), the Veer Shankar Shah-Raghunath Shah National Award (2008), a Tagore Fellowship (2018), The Bangalore Review June Jazz Award (2021) and the Sparrow Literary Award (2022). He teaches literature at Northeastern Hill University, Shillong.
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