Manil Suris debut novel, The Death of Vishnu (PEN/Faulkner Award nominee, 2002), satirized families in a single apartment building in Bombay. The Age of Shiva, about womens subjugation, postindependence Indian politics, and Hindu-Muslim conflicts, offers a more panoramic view of Indian society. A few critics compared it to Salman Rushdies Midnights Children, but The Age of Shiva is a smaller, tighter work, ambitious in scope if not as wholly successful. Written as a letter from Meera to her son, the novel shines with luminous prose, Hindu myths, and mother-child bonds, but bogs down as it chronicles the decades. Most critics agreed, however, that Suri effectively portrays Meera as the embodiment of an India caught between tradition and modernization.