Manil Suri was born in July, 1959 in Mumbai. He acquired many degrees in the early part of his life. He was graduated in mathematics from the University of Bombay in 1979.Then he moved to United States and received M.S.in 1980 and Ph.D. in 1983 from Carnegie-Mellon University. After completing his education he joined as a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County. But he was not enjoying his career as a mathematician rather his interest area was writing. He started writing in his spare time.

He wrote his first short story in 1985.Next ten years he tried at his level best but none of his writings got published. In 1995 his first story, "The Tyranny of Vegetables," was published in a Bulgarian-language journal. In 1995 he started writing The Death of Vishnu. It was published in 2002 and became bestseller.

The book is about social and religious tensions,.taking place in an apartment building in contemporary Mumbai.he became famous for the book and received literary acclaim for that. He has been a fellow member at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the MacDowell Colony, and was the winner of the 1998 Jenny McKean Moore Residency Fellowship given by George Washington University.