A few years ago, Manil Suri (S'80,'84) spoke at a mathematics research institute in Bombay. While he was there, a professor invited the guest lecturer to lunch, but the professor couldn't meet at the time suggested. He begged Suri not to tell anyone why he was unavailable—he played the piano and was having it tuned.
Suri, a math professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, could empathize. He had a secret, too. For years, he had been an aspiring novelist who would print copies of his stories late at night, when no one was around. "There's an attitude that if you don't spend 100% of your time on math research you can't be a good mathematician," explains Suri.
His secret life led to a debut novel, The Death of Vishnu (Norton, 2001), which satirized families in an apartment building in Bombay. The best-seller won the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Time magazine named the author a "Person to Watch." His second novel, The Age of Shiva (Norton, 2008), about women's roles in Indian society, was described as "sweepingly ambitious, captivating" in a New York Times book review. The mathematician is now at work on his third novel.
After The Death of Vishnu, Suri could have become a full-time author, but he believes mathematics "keeps me sane" during the often difficult writing process. Despite his dual career, there is no math in his novels. "The first book contains the word 'calculus' and the second I think has the word, 'algebra.' That's it."
–Rob Cullen (HS'02)
