Acclaimed Indian author Manil Suri returns with A Room in Bombay, a deeply personal memoir that explores queerness, migration, family, and emotional belonging through the lens of a mother–son relationship shaped across decades of letters.

Set between Bombay and America, the memoir draws from more than 2,700 letters exchanged between Suri and his mother over thirty years, weaving together intimate personal history with the changing social and emotional landscape of modern India. Combining literary reflection with emotional candour, the book examines identity, loneliness, caregiving, and the lasting influence of home and memory.

At the centre of the memoir is the cramped, shared Bombay apartment in which Suri grew up alongside his Hindu parents and three Muslim families. The single room occupied by his family becomes both refuge and confinement amid rising religious tensions, emotional strain, and personal silence. As Suri gradually comes to terms with his sexuality, the room emerges as a powerful metaphor for the boundaries—physical, emotional, and social—that shape the lives of its residents.

The memoir also traces the emotional realities of caring for an ageing parent and the evolving relationship between mother and son across continents and generations. Against the backdrop of a rapidly transforming Bombay, marked by changing neighbourhoods and growing anxieties around space and belonging, A Room in Bombay reflects on what it means to seek freedom while remaining emotionally tethered to one’s origins.

The book has already drawn praise from prominent literary voices. Author Suketu Mehta described it as a work that anyone “born of a mother” should read, while Aatish Taseer called it “a deeply affecting memoir.” Writer Jerry Pinto praised the memoir as “a Bombay story like few others.”

Suri is best known for his internationally acclaimed novels The Death of Vishnu, The Age of Shiva, and The City of Devi, as well as his popular mathematics book The Big Bang of Numbers. His work has been translated into twenty-seven languages and has received several international honours, including the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize and a Booker Prize longlisting.

Currently a distinguished professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Suri lives in Maryland with his husband. With A Room in Bombay, he offers readers an intimate and emotionally resonant account of family, sexuality, migration, and the fragile yet enduring ties that continue to shape identity across time and distance.