Gods, monsters and all that jazz in Mumbai-set book trilogy

This is the third book in a trilogy that is Manil Suri's ode to the city of his birth, Mumbai. A professor of mathematics at a US university, Suri has woven India's most populous state as a leitmotif in his writing.

In the first, The Death of Vishnu, Mumbai is the throbbing visceral city of today, a megalopolis that hides within its uber urban facade a labyrinth of localities marked by the ethnic and linguistic histories of migrants. In the second, The Age of Shiva, Suri goes back to a newly independent India when the city's urbanity still holds a salve to the oppressive caste-class-religion wounds that are felt in the rest of the country.

And now, in this third book, The City of Devi, Suri looks to a Mumbai in the future where the subcontinent teeters on the brink of nuclear war and the city has broken down into communal ghettos.

The Hindu trilogy is popularly understood to comprise three male gods - Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma - and Suri's novels draw from the trinity, at least in their titles. However, in The City of Devi, Suri overturns this established notion, either as a plot device or as an act of artistic liberty. Early in the narrative, pivotal figure Karun explains: "Vishnu the caretaker and Shiva the destroyer - my father had an interesting take on who should occupy the final spot in the trinity … who do you think should rightfully be called the creator of the universe? … creation comes from the womb. So logically, the true third should be the mother goddess, Devi."

Suri displaces Brahma, credited with creating the universe by blowing out everything in a single breath, in a feminist flourish and this sensibility informs the rest of the narrative.