In Sunday's Arts & life section, read a profile of Manil Suri, whose recently published second novel, The Age of Shiva, has received laudatory notices as far away as China, India and Britain. The native of India leads a double life -- he also is a tenured professor of math at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Writing seems to come naturally to Suri. As a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, he began writing frequently (that's an understatement) to his mother in India. Prem Suri asked the Guinness Book of World Records to add a  category for the most words written by a man to his mother. She said that from 1979 to 2001, he wrote her "2,411 letters with a total of 1,324,996 words."

His new novel is the second in a planned trilogy based on the three major Hindu gods. The Death of Vishnu was published in 2001.