After a trilogy of novels and a non-fiction book, what led you to turn inward towards writing a memoir?
I started this memoir, A Room in Bombay (HarperCollins India), in 2010, as a prospective magazine essay, after finishing my second novel. But the story was too huge, so I put it aside for several years. In 2013 my mother passed away, leaving behind a treasure trove of over 2700 letters I’d written to her over three decades, which she had meticulously preserved. “Maybe you’ll use them for a book one day,” she’d said. But it was still too soon; her death was too fresh in my mind. Then the pandemic came, and the isolation felt like the perfect time to restart this.

Manil Suri