The Death of Vishnu

by Manil Suri

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.

• ISBN10: 006000438X
• ISBN13: 9780060004385
• Publish Date: 1 January 2002 (first published 5 February 2001)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Harper Perennial
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[ibeforem]

This was an unusual book, but good. Being only marginally familiar with Indian culture, there were things that seemed strange to me, like the whole concept of a man that lives on the stairs landing in exchange for running errands for people in the building. In a way, this book was a like a soap opera. There were feuding neighbors, a “forbidden love” situation between a Hindu girl and Muslim boy that leads to a tragedy, and a man whose arranged marriage comes to an untimely end. All of this is interspersed with the memories and hallucinations(?) of a dying man. Overall, I think this book is about the search for happiness and enlightenment, and how it may not be what you think it is.