The Death of Vishnu: A Novel

ISBN: 0393050424

Author: Suri, Manil

Condition: New

Winner of the Barnes & Noble 2001 Discover Great New Writers Award for Fiction; finalist in the First Fiction category of the 2002 Los Angeles Times Book Awards. "Vibrantly alive, beautifully written, full of wonderfully rich and deeply human characters." At the opening of this masterful debut novel, Vishnu lies dying on the 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 apartment building we are pulled into the drama of the residents lives: Mr. Jalals obsessive search for higher meaning; Vinod Tanejas 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 divisions of contemporary India, and Vishnus ascent of the staircase parallels the souls progress through the various stages of existence. As Vishnu closes in on the riddle of his own mortality, we 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.