Indian Summer Continued

Continuing my string of books on the world's second-most populous country - here's the CIA's World Factbook section on India - I've finished The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling by David Gilmour and A Passage to India by E.M. Forster. The Kipling biography is an excellent treatment of a figure who is often overlooked, but was once of towering importance (Here's the September 27, 1926 Time Magazine cover). Passage to India is a classic from the 1920's, but it just did not work for me.




And I'm nearly finished with The Death of Vishnu: A Novel by Manil Suri, a strangely enchanting book about a man named Vishnu who lies dying on the staircase landing where he lives (yep, where he lives) and the lives of the other people who live in this crowded apartment building in Bombay. Is this fellow Vishnu really Vishnu the Hindu god or just a drunk guy named Vishnu? Leaving Vishnu aside, the stories of the other tenants is "part-sitcom and part-meditation" according to Powells.




Here's an interview with Manil Suri about The Death of Vishnu on the Powell's bookstore web site. Powells is the great used bookstore in Portland, Oregon.