The Death of Vishnu
Vishnu, the odd-job man in a Bombay apartment block, lies dying on the staircase landing: Around him the lives of the apartment dwellers unfold: the warring housewives on the first floor, lovesick teenagers on the second, and the widower, alone and quietly grieving on the top floor of the...
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Vishnu, the odd-job man in a Bombay apartment block, lies dying on the staircase landing: Around him the lives of the apartment dwellers unfold: the warring housewives on the first floor, lovesick teenagers on the second, and the widower, alone and quietly grieving on the top floor of the building. In a fevered state Vishnu looks back on his love affair with the seductive Padmim and wonders if he might actually be the god Vishnu, guardian of the entire universe. Blending incisive comedy with Hindu mythology and a dash of Bollywood sparkle, The Death of Vishnu is an intimate and compelling view of an unforgettable world.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780060004385 (006000438X)
Publish date: January 1st 2002
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Pages no: 301
Edition language: English
Category:
Novels,
Literature,
Cultural,
Book Club,
Adult Fiction,
Literary Fiction,
Contemporary,
India,
Asian Literature,
Indian Literature,
Asia
bookshelves: summer-2015, booker-longlist, published-2001, tbr-busting-2015, india, lit-richer, nutty-nuut, e-book, class-war, oneupmanship, moral-high-ground, religion, contemporary Read from August 04, 2014 to July 16, 2015 Description: Manil Suri's comic prose and imaginative language transp...
Not the most thrilling prose but I liked the Hindu mythology throughout. It was interesting to see the relationships between neighbors too. The ending didn't really deliver for me though.
The book started well for me with all the charaters living in a building in Mumbai developing but I couldn't enjoy it enough when the description about the dream of reincarnation of one of the flat owners started.
Enjoyable enough as a slice of life account of the residents of a Mumbai apartment building (also standing in as India in miniature) but there's a certain thinness to most of the characters that disappoints. The exceptions are the widower Mr. Taneja and the luckless Mr. Jalal whose interior lives ar...
Vishnu lives on the landing between two flights of stairs in a Bombay apartment building. Suri paints a broad portrait here, with many characters, each with a story to tell. Class is a major focus, building levels being indications, and there is the sort of bickering that seems annoying and comic at...
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