Death of Vishnu, The Unabridged
From Publishers Weekly This is a remarkable first novel, whose lyric prose is further enhanced by Lee's soft, mesmerizing reading. The story hinges on the comatose alcoholic Vishnu, who lays dying on the first floor landing of the Bombay apartment building for which he is the houseboy. Suri has fashioned Vishnu as the conduit to each and all of the book's vibrant characters and their intertwined comic, tragic and melodramatic stories. Vishnu enables listeners to move easily through the real, the mystical, the metaphoric; as he gradually slips down into death, he crawls slowly up the stairs, recalling fine and funny scenes of his youth and early manhood. Even listeners unfamiliar with India's religions and the Hindu trinity of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer will marvel at Suri's ability to reveal the tapestry and nuances of Indian culture through the activity contained in one small apartment building, to which Lee's rich and myriad Indian accents add atmosphere and humor. Simultaneous release with the Norton hardcover (Forecasts, Nov. 6, 2000). Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Product Description A compelling spiritual quest viewed through the color and tumult of life In a Bombay apartment block.At the opening of this masterful debut novel, Vishnu, the resident odd-job man, lies dying on the apartment building staircase he inhabits, while his neighbors, the Pathaks and the Asranis, argue over who will pay for an ambulance. As the action spirals up through the floors of the building, the dramas of the residents' lives unfold: Mr. Jalal's obsessive search for higher meaning; Vinod Taneja's longing for the wife he has lost; the comic elopement of Kavita Asrani, who fancies herself the heroine of a Hindi movie.Suffused with Hindu mythology, this story of one apartment building becomes a metaphor for the social and religious division of contemporary India, and Vishnu's ascent of the staircase parallels the sours progress through the various stages of existence. As Vishnu closes in on the riddle of his own mortality, he begins to wonder whether he might not be the god Vishnu, guardian not only of the fate of the building and its occupants, but of the entire universe. From Library Journal Vishnu, a dying alcoholic dwelling on a stairway landing of an apartment building in Bombay, comes to suspect that he is, in fact, the god Vishnu. He may also be hallucinating; his slow death ties together the stories of various inhabitants of the building: the comic feud of Mrs. Pathak and Mrs. Asrani; the elopement of a Muslim boy with an immature, movie-obsessed Hindu girl; the rational Mr. Jalal's crisis of faith; and Vishnu's own memories of love with the shallow prostitute Padmini. In an interview at story's end, Suri defines himself as an Indian writer and discusses the implications for his audience. While a layperson's familiarity with Hindu mythology and India's movie industry should suffice to follow the tale, a fuller understanding may elude many U.S. readers. A glossary, for instance, would be helpful, were such a thing possible on cassette. Narrated by John Lee, this audiobook is recommended with reservations. John Hiett, Iowa City P.L. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review "However you interpret this muti-layored novel, you'll be struck by by its fullness and by John Lee's perfectly pitched reading." -- -BookPage"Vibrantly alive, beautifully written, full of wonderfully rich and deeply human characters..." -- -- Michael Cunningham Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hour About the Author Manil Suri, a native of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), has lived in the United States since 1979. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker. The Death of Vishnu, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, is the first novel in a trilogy.