About the book

AN AMBITIOUS DOCUMENTATION OF KHASI LIFE AND CULTURE

A group of friends from Shillong journey to a remote part of West Khasi Hills to witness Ka Phor Sohrat, the feast of the dead, a unique six-day-long funeral ceremony of the Lyngngams, a Khasi sub-tribe. It may well be the last time this ancient rite is performed. The ceremony—involving a number of rituals and the sacrifice of as many as fifty bulls—will conclude with the cremation of a beloved elder, a woman whose body has been preserved in a tree house for nine whole months.

By mistake, however, the group ends up reaching the secluded hamlet of Nongshyrkon seven days early. Stuck in the jungle for eleven days, they spend their nights around a fire in the middle of a spacious hut built especially for them, sharing stories and debating issues in what turns out to be a journey of discovery for all of them.

Funeral Nightsis an unconventional novel—a vast collection of stories big and small, not so much about death, but about life, past, present and future. This is intimate access to a whole world, spectacular in its documentation of a tribe’s life and culture such as has never been attempted before.

About the Author

Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih was born and brought up in Sohra, Meghalaya. He writes poems, drama and fiction in Khasi and English. His latest works include The Yearning of Seeds and Time’s Barter: Haiku and Senryu. He is the author of Around the Hearth: Khasi Legends and the co-editor of Dancing Earth: An Anthology of Poetry from Northeast India.

He is the recipient of several awards, including the first North-East Poetry Award (Tripura, 2004), the first Veer Shankar Shah-Raghunath Shah National Award for literature (Madhya Pradesh, 2008) and a Tagore Fellowship (IIAS, Shimla, 2018). He teaches literature at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong.