Before starting at Goucher College this fall, every new student will get acquainted with the work of a math professor at University of Maryland Baltimore County who moonlights as a novelist.

Manil Suri’s debut novel, “The Death of Vishnu,” is required reading for freshmen and transfer students this summer.

Each year, Goucher faculty members meet to select a book they feel will enrich students. The college has made a tradition of reading books by local authors — “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story,” a book by the Johns Hopkins pediatric surgeon has also been a mandatory book — so the authors can come to discuss the book in person.

“We were quite moved by it,” Janine Bowen, Goucher’s associate dean for undergraduate studies, said of Suri’s novel. “The references to Hindu mythology were meaningful and powerful.”

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Set in an apartment building in Mumbai, the book chronicles the last moments of man named Vishnu. As he listens to his neighbors argue over who will pay for an ambulance, a metaphor for the social and religious divisions of India emerges, according to the book’s summary. Some of the nation’s top book critics have described “The Death of Vishnu” as “remarkable,” “enchanting” and “delightful.”

New Goucher students will discuss the novel with faculty members during the five-day orientation in August.

“In my experience it is meaningful to have a shared experience during orientation,” Bowen said. “It’s also meaningful for students to get exposure to what a seminar is like in a college atmosphere.”

Despite the success of “The Death of Vishnu,” Suri said he will continue in his day job as math professor.

“I think one helps the other, because certainly when I write a math paper, I spend an extraordinarily long amount of time trying to make it understandable,” Suri says in an interview posted on his Web site at manisuri.com.

mmcilroy@baltimoreexaminer.com

Which book would you make required reading for incoming college freshmen? Respond in our comments  below.