The Age of Shiva

On March 26, Manil Suri will be at the Harbourfront Centre reading from his greatly anticipated new novel, The Age of Shiva, at once a powerful story of a country in turmoil and an extraordinary portrait of the devastating conflicts of a woman's heart.  Manil Suri was born in Bombay. His first novel, The Death of Vishnu, was awarded the 2002 Barnes and Noble Discover Prize, shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award and was received with international critical acclaim.

March 26, 2008 at 7.30 pm

Brigantine Room 
HARBOURFRONT CENTER
100 Queens Quay

About the book: Coming of age in Delhi in the fifties, Meera takes her father’s atheism and progressive attitudes for granted, but she keenly resents the tyrannies of her favored older sister, who forces Meera to play the go-between in her romance with the handsome Dev. When Dev is dumped for a more suitable fiancé, Meera rashly attempts to console him; soon she is stuck with yet another of her sister’s hand-me-downs—this time, forever. Dev drinks too much, and his family lives in a one-bedroom flat by the railroad tracks. Only when Meera conceives a child will she truly have something to call her own. Suri’s second novel is a sensuous, nuanced portrait of motherhood, but it also sparks with the frictions of being female in an India where television soaps and political slogans compete noisily with Hindu myth. Here a wife may find herself eating the scraps off her husband’s plate one day and spitting on him the next.

- - Syerah