Tales from Qabristan

In a small backwater village in Kerala, Farook prepares to bury his father in the qabristan behind the mosque. As the rituals proceed, he is filled with memories of his growing years. Memories of the village, of secret lives, sexual proclivities, superstitions—and above all, the slow decaying of his family. Tales from Qabristan is a strikingly vivid portrayal of a boy trying to understand the world through the eyes of the adults around him, as he navigates failure, love, life and death. Its language often slipping into magical realism, traversing the realms of both fantasy and reality, the novel reminds us that children are capable of discerning extremely complex realities even if they cannot fully understand them.