Manil Suri

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 ... (more)“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

Literary Sojourn is an annual gathering of authors and book lovers set in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. Each year, 500 readers from all over the country gather in Steamboat Springs to meet the creators of their favorite books and to celebrate, first and foremost, the joy and inspiration of books ... (more)and reading.

An evening of fiction. Suri reads from his second novel, The Age of Shiva (W.W. Norton, 2008) and Ganeshananthan reads from her debut, Love Marriage (Random House, 2008). $5 suggested donation