LITERATURE + LECTURES

Brazos Bookstore is pleased to welcome  Manil Suri author of The Age of Shiva, for a book signing and discussion, Thursday, February 12, at 7:00 p.m.

When Manil Suri’s first novel, The Death of Vishnu, was published in 2001, it was universally celebrated as a literary phenomenon. Time magazine proclaimed Suri a “Person to Watch,” and praised Vishnu’s “eerie and memorable transcendence,” and Anna Mundow, in the Boston Globe, declared that “Suri’s penetration of his characters’ lives is as precise and cunning as that of a master surgeon like J. M. Coetzee.”

Winner of the 2002 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize and finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, Suri’s debut was equally lauded by his peers.

The Age of Shiva is Suri’s follow-up to that remarkable debut, a novel that captures the sweep of Indian history from the time of the partition until 1981. Richly layered with themes from Hindu mythology, it is both a powerful story of a country in turmoil and an extraordinary portrait of maternal love. Suri has conjured a world of terrific promise and terrible fear in The Age of Shiva -- stunningly described through the words of Meera, his impassioned female narrator. The themes and contradictions in Hindu mythology (most notably of Shiva, known as a deity with both destructive and transformative power) mirror the adult life of Meera, a riveting, unpredictable protagonist with a stubborn desire to follow her own path through the male-dominated landscape of post-colonial India.

“[Suri] is fearless in imagining a passionate, confused and not always admirable woman. That striking creation, and his refusal to give in to any hint of the didactic or the predictable, affirms his position as a writer worth serious attention.” -- New York Times Book Review

"A stunning novel, proof that Manil Suri is a major storyteller of heart and intelligence." -Amy Tan

The Age of Shiva is at once a powerful story of a country in turmoil and an "unflinchingly honest" portrait of maternal love-"intricately interwoven with the ancient rites and myths" (Booklist) crucial to India's history. Meera, the narrator, is seventeen years old when she catches her first glimpse of Dev, performing a song so infused with passion that it arouses in her the first flush of erotic longing. She wonders if she can steal him away from Roopa, her older, more beautiful sister, who has brought her along to see him.

It is only when her son is born that Meera begins to imagine a life of fulfillment. She engulfs him with a love so deep, so overpowering, that she must fear its consequences.

Meera's unforgettable story, embodying Shiva as a symbol of religious upheaval, places The Age of Shiva among the most compelling novels to emerge from contemporary India. Reading group guide included.

Manil Suri was born and raised in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. He came to the United States as a student when he was twenty. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland (when not visiting Mumbai) and is a citizen of both the United States and India.

Suri’s first published fiction in English was The Seven Circles, a short story that appeared in The New Yorker on Valentine’s Day, 2000. The Death of Vishnu, his first novel, debuted worldwide in India on January 6, 2001. In addition to being published by W. W. Norton in the United States and Bloomsbury in the UK, the novel has been translated into twenty-two foreign languages. Suri was named by Time magazine as a “Person to Watch” in 2000, and he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction in 2004.

“Writing The Death of Vishnu led me to Hindu mythology and to the great philosophical works of India like the Bhagwad Gita,” Suri says. “It helped me reconnect with a spiritual side of myself that had been dormant for a long time.” Working on The Age of Shiva was also a voyage of discovery. “With this book, I immersed myself in modern India. I understood what enormous challenges have been met since independence, and what a tremendous bond I have with the country of my birth. It is a source of joy to me that my book is being released in India’s anniversary year of six decades of independence.” An August 2007 essay entitled “What Unites India?” published in the sixtieth independence-day anniversary issue of India Today can be accessed here.

In addition to being a writer, Suri is also a mathematician. He obtained his PhD in applied mathematics from Carnegie-Mellon University and is a tenured full professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). “Ever since Vishnu was a success, people have been asking me whether I am going to quit mathematics. The answer is no. It took me seven years to write my second novel, and having another profession ensured I went only modestly crazy.” While Suri still does mathematical research in the field of numerical analysis, he has been spending more time devising ways to bring mathematics to the public at large. “Many people like mathematics while in school, but then have no further opportunity to enjoy it. It’s not like art, for which you can go to a museum to satisfy a craving. I’d like to help push mathematics into the cultural arena. Perhaps even put a mathematician on Oprah.” The most successful of his popularizing projects has been the presentation Taming Infinity, which he even presented at the 2006 International Literature Festival Berlin. This and other outreach efforts can be accessed through his academic website. (See in particular an excerpt of his short story about mathematicians, The Tolman Trick.)