The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri Reviewed by Abby Pollak At a darkly comic moment early in Manil Suri's first novel, Mrs. Asrani, one of two warring Hindu housewives in a Bombay apartment house, embraces the lascivious son of the Muslim family upstairs, and cries, "If we can't all live in harmony in this building, what hope is there for the nation?" Thus are we plunged into the tangled lives of several families in a three-story hive of frustration and frayed marriages, petty resentments and jealousies, desire and despair, religious warfare, and metaphysical confusion. With irony, antic humor, elegance, and a stunning command of complex narrative structure, Suri weaves a rich tapestry: the buying and selling of stairwell living space; the colorful saga of Mrs. Asrani and Mrs. Pathak who, addicted to each other's daily larcenies, share a kitchen and trade ever more earsplitting accusations of missing spices and utensils, misappropriated counter and cabinet space, stolen ghee and wasted water; timid Mr. Asrani's secret visits to the local drinkwalla and his Saturday atonement tour of selected Bombay mosques and Hindu temples, ending "if no one was looking," with the Catholic church across the street; the solitary Mr. Taneja's silent yearning for his long-dead wife whose dying wish was to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records by memorizing every line of dialogue from the movie "Jeevan" (or, "Life"); the steamy romance between Salim Jalal and Kavita Asrani, whose belief in the gospel of the movies is as giddy and treacherous as Salim's philosopher-father's quest for self-transcendence through self-flagellation and the literal all-night embrace of the dead servant Vishnu, whom he believes to be a true Hindu god and whose prophet he desperately desires to become. Throughout, Suri weaves the tale of the habitually-drunk resident-servant Vishnu, anti-hero extraordinaire, who lies dying on the ground-floor landing, while the Asranis and Pathaks argue about who will pay for the ambulance to take him away. As Vishnu's soul slowly ascends the staircase on its journey to Paradise and apotheosis, Vishnu the man puzzles through the events of his own life; his father's brutality, his mother's refrain: "You are Vishnu, keeper of the universe, keeper of the sun," and his childish echo: "I am Vishnu, keeper of the sun . . . There is only darkness without me;" his failed romance with the prostitute Padmini, his hopeless passion for Kavita Asrani, his longing for love and deliverance. In a tour de force of magical realism, Vishnu's picaresque journey up the stairwell not only binds together the lives of his neighbors but also transforms the apartment house into a metaphor for the social and religious conflicts of contemporary India. The Death of Vishnu is a remarkable novel. Hilarious and moving, erudite and riddled with superstition, Rabelasian in scope and Proustian in its observation of the small moments of everyday meanness and compassion, it is a delicious portrait of the past — when gods were real and a vibrant part of daily life — and of modern times, where the dynamics of faith and despair, love and human vanity, struggle on a stage studded with chic boutiques, video stores, "kitty-parties," and the neon lights of B-movie icons. It is also a gorgeous evocation of one man's spiritual crisis and redemptive journey, the coalescence of the servant Vishnu, master of inarticulate love and misplaced desire, and his eponymous divinity, the god Vishnu, Keeper and Preserver of the Universe, hope of the nation.