People like Manil Suri

Manil Suri (born July 1959) is an Indian-American mathematician and writer of a trilogy of novels all named for Hindu gods. His first novel, The Death of Vishnu (2001), which was long-listed for the 2001 Booker Prize, short-listed for the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize that year. Since then, he has published two more novels, The Age of Shiva (2008) and The City of Devi (2013), completing the trilogy.

Suri was born in Bombay, the son of R.L. Suri, a Bollywood music director, and Prem Suri, a schoolteacher. He attended the University of Bombay before moving to the United States, where he attended Carnegie Mellon University. He received a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1983, and became a mathematics professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Suri began writing short stories in the 1980s during his spare time, but none were published. In 1995 he began writing The Death of Vishnu, a novel about social and religious tensions in India taking place in an apartment building in contemporary Mumbai. An excerpt, "The Seven Circles", appeared in The New Yorker and the novel was published in 2001, becoming an international bestseller. Suri received a six-figure advance as a result of a bidding war between publishing houses, ultimately won by W.W. Norton. In 2002, Suri won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for The Death of Vishnu. His second novel, The Age of Shiva (2008), was listed as one of the best books of the decade by About.com. His third novel, The City of Devi (2013), was ranked number 12 in the 50 essential works of LGBT fiction list by Flavorwire.