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The first page begins rather disconcertingly and suddenly turns exquisite in the telling. You are then lured into a tender experience and become enamored with Meera, the main character. Guilt racked, despairing, full of rage, full of spirit, twisted in the unremitting loneliness of an oppressive marriage, she has a strange hold on us.

Meera becomes besotted with Dev, a singer and the boyfriend of her sister Roopa. Eight years after the end of British rule, Meera is only 17 when she finds herself married to Dev. Adjusting to a lower middle class family in Delhi where her brother and sister in law share a bedroom is the least of her troubles. She has to be alert to her brother-in-law Arya’s roving eyes, while trying to make sense of his right wing Hindutva beliefs.

She wrests with the manipulative control of father, Paji who is intolerant of a woman being submissive to a man, admires Indira Gandhi , prides himself on having Muslim friends, insists on Meera getting a college education and forces her to have an abortion .Paji is frighteningly convincing. Meanwhile her husband Dev still longs for Roopa.

Almost halfway into the book, a baby boy Ashwin is born to Meera. It is interesting to note that Suri did not intend to write about Meera the mother. He was going to write about Ashwin, the son. A tumultuous element of an ambitious narrative comes into view at this point with the compelling intensity of a mother/son relationship.

It is a fierce, obsessive, complex, umbilical, all consuming connection. Dev’s singing career is not successful and he resorts to alcohol as a prop. Through the words of the narrator Meera we move through the conflicts of jealousy, desire, as she tries to chart out her own path in post colonial India. But this is not just the story of the psychological journey of the woman, Meera.

The plot parallels the birth of India as a new nation caught between tradition and modernity and the layered themes of Hindu mythology. Post independent India is mirrored in the self determination and resilience of Meera as she makes her perilous way among the men who enter her life.

Although brilliantly constructed, with shocking insights into human nature, I found the situations the characters find themselves a bit extreme, with scenes sometimes too theatrical and surreal so that the suspense becomes monotonous.

Age of Shiva even while it lures with a hypnotic story telling and sensory overload, suddenly becomes stagnant. What’s distinctive about Suri is that he is a captivating writer with a signature lyricism .The plot does keep you engaged , a kind of all encompassing allegorical weight of political events spanning three generations and the travails of India during the Partition of India.

We luxuriate in the rich sampling of history, political events, relationships, rituals, and passion. India becomes a familiar historical landscape filtered through the craftsmanship of Suri.

The narrative hooks take us on unconventional paths as he exposes the dark underside of human relationships, misguided actions, leaps of faith and an unconventional retrospective of maternal love.

Like Death of Vishnu he comes up with the formula of giving a mythological twist to the catharsis of his characters. Manil Suri still retains the wicked sense of humor we discovered in Death of Vishnu. He is a dramatic storyteller, singularly inventive and gloriously keeps his promise of telling a story.

And we know Manil Suri has much more to tell. Death of Vishnu published seven years ago became a national best seller in the United States and Manil Suri was long listed for the Booker Prize and won many literary awards.

Winner of the 2002 Barnes and Noble Discover Prize, finalist for the PEN Faulkner award, Manil Suri is on a book tour for Age of Shiva, at the time of this writing. I talk to him in Seattle by phone. How do you have this intuitive connection with the women characters, especially Meera? You absorb as you go through life.

I remembered my mother and her sisters. Very strong, obstinate and this kind of awareness resides in you and you can draw on it. I observed my women neighbors. A man can have a woman’s intuition. You just have to dig deep.

How was the book Age of Shiva received in India?

It had very good reviews. Indian readers get the cultural references. A couple of American critics were offended and called it "porn, unspeakable, incestuous". It may have been due to the American way of interpretation.

Why did the book focus on Meera?

The book took seven years to write.

For a long time I struggled with the first part of the book. Then I let the story go where Meera was going. It was sequential after this and ended in 1981. I did not have any preconceived notion and let it the end the year it ended.

What kind of research went into the writing?

It was formidable. My cousin Hema’s parents and cousins, contributed a great deal to the many rituals and details of life in Rawalpindi and refugee camps. I would spend days in Times of India archives.

My book became filled with an assortment of characters amongst them a Sadhu. I even went to Junagadh to live with sadhus during the festival of Shivaratri. I had to delete the character of a sadhu which I had intended to use in Age of Shiva.

Will he appear in your next book?

Yes, I may use this character in the last of the trilogy.

Was the editing process difficult?

There were a few editorial suggestions. And when there were we were like two lawyers pleading back and forth. The editing took nine months of my time. Tell me of your growing up years. I grew up in Bombay, a very interesting time for me.

We were paying guests in a middle class home and lived with three Muslim families. We had the inverted experience of being in a minority.

What books were you reading that time?

Trashy stuff. Fiction Arthur Haley, Harold Robbins, Irwing Wallace. Actually they were good guidelines for me .I realized the importance of plot and how a good story should move along.

Have you had any formal training in creative writing?

After writing Death of Vishnu, I did attend three workshops with several instructors. I attended a workshop in George Washington University hosted by Vikram Chandra. I found it very useful, this outreach course. In 1997 I attended a five-day course with Michael Cunningham. He was the first person who told me, "You are a writer." You are a Math Professor.

How do you relate the process of writing, a solitary individual exercise with that of teaching a room full of students?

I enjoy teaching. It is necessary for me. After sitting at home writing by myself, it is very energetic to meet flesh and blood in a class room. You have said in a previous interview that writing was a hobby in secret. No one knew I was writing and Death of Vishnu came as a big surprise to the academic circles. Interestingly, two professors came up to me and confided they were actors.

One was an Indian and even professed a desire to act in the film version of Death of Vishnu. I was intrigued by the cover of your book. A woman standing on the seashore with a child nestled at her hip; it captured the essence of the book in one framed shot.

I knew exactly what I wanted. I spent a long time sifting through photographs on the internet and then found a photograph by a French photographer Boubart who had died. So we got the rights and it turned out to be an amazing front cover.

What films do you watch?

I have an old collection of Hindi DVDs. I like the campiness, the bad production values the garishness... Manil Suri lives in Maryland where he is a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.