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Manil Suri overtakes Grisham

Suleman Din

Perched atop the bestseller lists in San Francisco and Boston, and well ensconced among the top 10 in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, The Death of Vishnu has jumpstarted Manil Suri's writing career.

Suri's tale about a dying man's soul eavesdropping on his Mumbai neighbors had earned him glowing literary reviews in publications like The New York Times.

Now it's earning profits too, topping the works of well-known authors like John Grisham, Don DeLillo and John LeCarre. Though nationally the book lags far behind its competitors, in the above mentioned cities, it is trouncing its opponents.

Vishnu's publisher, W W Norton & Company, couldn't be happier. "Certainly, we were not planning on this novel to be a commercial blockbuster," said Elizabeth Riley, publicity representative for Norton.

"But we're glad to see a novel by a previously unknown author do so well," she continues. "Booksellers across the country are incredibly enthusiastic about it."

It seems the large advance Norton paid to win a bidding war for the rights to Suri's novel ($350,000 for the US edition, with rights sold in 13 other countries) was worth it. In Boston and San Francisco, it's been the best-selling book for three weeks straight. In Los Angeles, it's second-best seller, and in Washington DC it's the eighth-best.

While Riley could not release the number of copies that were printed, she did say that the number of copies made for its first run was "substantial", especially for the first book by a little-known author. It is now in its second printing, and Riley said a third printing is definitely a possibility. "I think we knew when we had the manuscript that we had something special," she says.

Riley said that Suri has personally influenced the reception the novel has gotten.

"It's rare for a first novel to be so spontaneously well-liked," she said. "It's partly because Suri's been on a 15-city tour: but that said, many authors go on tours, but he is such an engaging person, he brings new readers."

She cites Suri's stay in San Francisco as an example, where there was "a huge swell of support from independent book sellers". In four days, he visited five independent book stores, and was featured on the front of the Arts section of the San Francisco Chronicle.

She said the novel appealed to audiences in Boston and San Francisco because "the audience there are very sophisticated and literary, with the influence of universities in the area." Readers there do not necessarily pick Grisham over other available books, she said.

Also, Riley said, word-of-mouth has helped him, as both cities were very early in Suri's tour. All authors know how difficult it is to be noticed, when movies have multi-million dollar promotional budgets, she says. "Book publishing tends to be a much more quiet affair."

Indeed, a year and a half ago Suri labored quietly as a mathematics professor with a desire to tell some stories. Now he's on a three-week publicity tour of Europe.

"Mostly, a literary novel will sell about 20,000 copies, and it would be a nice, hobby-like thing," he said in an earlier interview with rediff.com. "You won't go on a big tour. Maybe they will send you to a few cities on the East Coast and the West Coast. It will be respectable. So this is something else."

Riley agrees. "Considering the promotional budget we had for Suri, most first time authors don't get 15-city tours. But we had faith that the book would get the attention it deserved."

Suri took a one-year sabbatical from teaching, and will return to the classrooms this September. He's not retiring from writing though-he has two more books planned, The Life of Shiva and The Birth of Brahma. Riley wouldn't say what Norton's plans are for promoting Suri's next books. "With a second novel, it's a different situation, because by then you will have a track record."

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