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Loading... The Death of Vishnu: A Novel (original 2001; edition 2002)by Manil Suri
Work InformationThe Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri (2001)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Here's what I wrote in 2009 about this read: "Good read about life in modern Mumbai. Tragi-comic, with the most memorial characters being the "warring housewives" on the first floor of the apartment building where Vishnu lived (on a landing)." ( ) A wonderful tale that revolves around Vishnu, who sleeps on the staircase landing of a Bombay apartment block and does odd-jobs for the residents. He is dying and we begin to meet the residents as they argue about who will pay for an ambulance to take Vishnu away. There are two Hindu families, the Pathaks and Asranis, who have petty arguments about sharing a kitchen, there is Mr Taneja, whose wife has died and who has become a recluse and there is the unfortunate Mr and Mrs Jalal and Mr Jalal's search for enlightenment in different religions and their son who is secretly meeting Kavita, the Asrani's daughter. All of this is intertwined with Indian myths and religion. There is humour as the residents deal with each other. Vishnu looks back on his life as he dies and we read the back story of many of the residents but it is the flats and the staircase where the novel happens. no reviews | add a review
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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. 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 divisions of contemporary India, and Vishnu's ascent of the staircase parallels the soul's 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. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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