New Delhi, Oct. 10 -- For the last several years, the ordinary citizen has lived under the questioning gaze of the State, repeatedly asked to prove their citizenship and more recently, their right to franchise. Sections of society have raised their voices against these arbitrary demands, but it is the poorest, with no formal paperwork of their antecedents or means to stand up to authority, who have paid the steepest price. Last month, when The Indian Express published its investigation into alleged irregularities in electoral governance, I thought of one such character, Vishnu, known by this mononym only, in Manil Suri's Booker-longlisted first book, The Death of Vishnu (2001).

I hadn't made much of the novel when I first read it years a...