Thomas Seidman, one of Suri's colleagues, describes Suri as a fine mathematician. In the 25 years that Suri has been at UMBC, he has written more than 50 papers that have been published in scholarly journals, and has secured more than $900,000 grants for research projects in his specialty, numerical analysis.
"Manil is very good at picking problems to solve that are both useful and solvable," says Seidman, a professor in the UMBC math department, "and that's a lot more difficult than it sounds."
Suri began writing fiction as a hobby. "I needed a break from math," he says. "It was taking up all my time." In 1994, during a visit Suri made to India, a homeless man named Vishnu died on the steps of the apartment building where his parents were living.
"I had been very sick at the time as well," Suri says. "My parents were taking care of me, when the municipal authorities came and took Vishnu's body away. I decided I had to write about it."
Suri's debut effort made the cover of the T imes' book review section, was published in 22 languages and was a finalist for the prestigious Penn-Faulkner award. Suri's editors began asking, with increasing urgency, what he was going to publish next.
"It was all pretty overwhelming," he says. "For a year or two afterwards, I couldn't write fiction. I didn't want the pressure. Luckily, I was 40, and I had my career in math. No one at the university treated me any differently than they had before. It grounded me."
Eventually, Suri resumed writing not only novels (he is busy now on the third book in the trilogy) but letters to his mother, though he says that the pace now has slowed from three letters a week to one. And if Prem Suri ever wants to take a second stab at the world record for the number of words written by a son to his mother, she now has another, 452-page tool in her arsenal.
Technically, T he Age of Shiva is a novel, not a piece of personal correspondence. But, perhaps it's not too much of a stretch to also call it a love letter.
mary.mccauley@baltsun.com
Manil Suri
Age: 49
Birthplace: Mumbai
Residence: Silver Spring
Day Job: Professor of mathematics, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Recent Accomplishment: Published The Age of Shiva, the second novel in a trilogy inspired by the three major Hindu gods.
Publishing Breakthrough: The Death of Vishnu, 2001.
Education: A bachelor's degree in math in 1979 from the University of Bombay. A doctorate in applied math in 1983 from Carnegie Mellon University.
Personal: He has a partner of 18 years.
