A Room in Bombay

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A best-selling novelist turns to memoir in this compelling story of a son's love, a mother's obsession, and the malevolent grip of the past. Indian American author Manil Suri grew up in a large crumbling apartment in Bombay (now Mumbai) which his parents, who were Hindu, shared with three Muslim families. Their single room, at times a refuge from the religious and territorial tensions pervading the apartment, was also a prison that held them captive—his parents stuck in an unhappy marriage, the author unable to explore the dawning realization he might be gay. At age 20, Suri managed to break free and come to the US, where he finally found the freedom to embrace his sexuality and find a life partner. But the room, which still held his parents hostage, kept wrenching him back to Bombay. By now real estate prices had risen so much that neighbors had begun conspiring to take over the room, causing Suri's parents to dig in even more. Eventually