The Age of Shiva

Praise

"The Age of Shiva is a stunning novel, proof that Manil Suri is a major storyteller of heart and intelligence. Like Anna Karenina, The Age of Shiva is both intimate and epic, a balance of sensual beauty and visceral reality. Suri reveals truths about human nature: our circumstantial passions, the obsessions that confine us, and the many ways we rebel and find self-expression. Above all, this is a majestic story about love and its unexpected consequences."
—Amy Tan

"The second novel from Suri, author of The Death of Vishnu, follows Meera Sawhney from her unhappy 1950s marriage to aspiring singer Dev Arora through to her own son’s coming-of-age. After an impulsive act forces Meera’s marriage at 17, her complex, controlling father decries her tying herself (and, by extension, her family) to the provincial, lower-class Aroras. Meera soon finds herself pulled in different directions by her in-laws’ religious orthodoxy, her father’s progressivism (which doesn’t run deep), her husband’s self-pitying alcoholism and her own resentment. She finds salvation in the birth of a son, Ashvin; mother love, which Suri describes in intensely physical terms, gives her life passion and purpose, and overwhelms her adult relationships. But as India modernizes, Meera senses that Ashvin, and she herself, must live their own lives. Suri renders Meera’s perspective marvelously, especially in small particulars (such as Meera’s deliberations around the cutting of Ashvin’s hair) and in the perils and conflicts Meera faces in her relationships with men. He also takes a close look at Hindu practices and charts the rise of religious nationalism in the years following Gandhi’s death. Suri’s vivid portrait of a woman in post-independence India engages timeless themes of self-determination."
—Publishers Weekly

"Sweepingly ambitious, captivating. . . .[Suri] is fearless in imagining a passionate, confused and not always admirable woman. That striking creation, and his refusal to give in to any hint of the didactic or the predictable, affirms his position as a writer worth serious attention."
—New York Times Book Review

"Set against the dramatic landscape of post-independence India, Manil Suri’s The Age of Shiva uncovers astonishing graces in an ill starred marriage."
—Vogue

"Of all the passions quietly smoldering between the covers of Manil Suri’s second novel, The Age of Shiva, mother love is the most incendiary. . . As in his first novel, Suri uses tales of Hindu gods and goddesses to illuminate mortal hearts. A rich and multilayered read."
—O Magazine

"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."
—The New Yorker

"With The Age of Shiva, Suri once again triumphs. . . . Behind Suri's crystalline portrait of Meera and her family is the hazy but optimistic vision of an India learning to cope with independence."
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"A sure command of all the registers of prose, from the lush and poetic to the ironic and witty; an important historical theme…an ingenious use of classic Hindu myths .. and, not least, an unsettling account of the joys of motherhood. All these indicate a novelist of real scope and ambition."
—Washington Post

"Suri affectingly and acutely examines not only the trauma of partition but the terrible no-man's-land of women caught between the opportunities of Pandit Nehru's secular nation and the stifling realities of India's ancient traditions….Suri's powerful and precise writing compels you to keep reading this serendipitous novel that's not only technically daring and intellectually challenging but profoundly satisfying on an emotional level. One hopes Suri won't take as long to complete his third volume, The Birth of Brahma, but if the result is this accomplished, it'll be well worth the wait."
—Sydney Morning Herald

"Epic.… Suri does an impressive job of conjuring his heroine's inner life. Written in the form of a long love letter from mother to son, this is a slow-burning, unsentimental novel, weaving Hindu myth and legend with the violent movements of Indian politics."
—The Mail on Sunday (UK)

"Broader is scope than its predecessor, this is a narrative of epic proportions. . . .Many of Suri’s literary trademarks are in evidence here: a wealth of detail, luminosity of prose, vivid portrayals of mundane human interactions. . . Suri has matured as a writer."
—Seattle Times

"Amid a tumultuous era of Indian history, Suri tells a bittersweet love story imbued with timeless mythic overtones. His Meera fascinates and infuriates. What matters most is that he makes us care."
—San Francisco Chronicle

"A skillfully crafted story about love and loss, The Age of Shiva is a substantial saga of family ties and betrayal that keeps you gripped from the first page onwards."
—Indian Express

"A finely conceived, absorbing and powerful book."
—Kirkus, starred review

"Unflinchingly honest. . . An enlightening family saga set in modern India, but intricately interwoven with the ancient rites and myths that are integral to the subcontinent’s tumultuous history."
—Booklist

"This is, simply, grand-scale storytelling mixed with matters intimately explored. The prose couldn’t be more accessible."
—Memphis Flyer