Product Description Life and Times of Mr S worked for me like magic. It unsettled my notion of what was real, what possible, and resettled that notion in a strange luminous place. Narayanan uses what he sees as singular illusions -- class, caste, family, for example -- to conjure a 'pluriverse' of his own, crowded with multiple, often polymorphous identities that, by their very nature, could be illusions too. This recalls the work (and play) of magician-acrobats and Narayanan is one of them. Questioning the very nature of reality and the possibility of finding true answers, he pushes at limits, walking a dangerous tightrope. I am dazzled by his dexterity. -- Adil Jussawalla About the Author Vivek Narayanans first book Universal Beach was published in 2006. Narayanan has been a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University and a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, where he worked on his current project, an experimental writing through of Valmikis Ramayana. Currently, Narayanan teaches at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.