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 201
Award-winning author Cyrus Mistry's 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 newborn's 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 Year's 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 Flower is another triumph from one of the country's most gifted storytellers.
