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Doongaji House
Doongaji House: Selected Plays collects the finest plays of award-winning playwright Cyrus Mistry. Doongaji House won the Sultan Padamsee Award for Playwriting in 1978 and depicts the travails of a Parsi family living in a crumbling old mansion in Mumbai. The Legacy of Rage is a coruscating look at a dysfunctional East Indian family squabbling over their inheritance and the sweeping changes in society that have brought them to the edge of penury. A Flowering of Disorder, a play that is being published for the first time, is also set in Mumbai and goes deep into the problems, both farcical and profound, of a middle-class family attempting to cope with the challenges of living in a metropolis. Taken together, these brilliant plays expose the insecurities, frailties, and contradictions that lie at the heart of Indian middle-class society.
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The Radiance Of Ashes
Award-winning author Cyrus Mistrys first novel Drifter, dropout, dreamer Jingo believes he has rejected any form of class privilege in a hideously unequal society. Making a meagre living as a part-time door-to-door market researcher, he jots down notes on characters and insights for a novel. Is he serious about his self-professed vocation? Or just too laid-back, just too fond of getting high? As the story moves effortlessly from a middle-class Parsi housing colony to a far-flung slum on the outskirts of the city, memories of a bitter love affair continue to haunt Jingo, but its only when his other romance-with the city-erupts in a nightmare of horror that he realizes hed better wake up before its too late. The Radiance of Ashes is a beautifully described tale of desire, duty and dreams. It is also a story about families, about the truths we hold and the lies we tell, about the fires that burn in each of us-what is left once the flames have died away.
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Passion Flower - Seven Stories of Derangement
Award-winning author Cyrus Mistrys first collection of short stories. Award-winning author Cyrus Mistrys first collection of short stories is dark, mysterious and inhabited by characters that walk a thin line between fantasy and reality. A serendipitous discovery on the floor of a local bus transforms the melancholic life of Percy, who meets a ghost in the washroom of a public library, a new mother struggling with depression and the urge to end her newborns life opens the door to a stranger, stalked by mysterious men, Jacintha believes her enemies are out to eliminate her because she knows too much, on New Years Eve, an aged couple clashes, replaying an annual ritual that shrouds the unacknowledged secret buried between them twenty-three years ago, two childhood friends, now co-workers at an advertising agency, indulge in a never-ending display of one-upmanship, false camaraderie and intense, unspoken resentment, Bokha tries to counter the powerful black magic of his wicked old mother in order to shield his helpless lover and Mahendroo, full of himself, is consumed by his obsessive search for an elusive species of Passiflora. Original and disturbing, Passion Floweris another triumph from one of the countrys most gifted storytellers. Interesting facts Cyrus Mistry is the author of Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer which won this years DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, one of the subcontinents most prestigious literary prizes. This is the authors first collection of short stories and it is sure to get a lot of attention in the media. The stories are unique and some of them offer a rare glimpse into the life of Bombay Parsees, something Cyrus is adept at writing about 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 previous works include the novels The Radiance of Ashes (2005) and Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer (2012), which won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2014.