An award-winning novelist who was named one of Time magazine’s “Person to Watch” will be speaking at UCF on Tuesday, April 5.

Manil Suri will speak about the challenge of capturing the essence of his homeland in his novels.

“Capturing India” will begin at 3 p.m. in the Key West Ballroom of the Student Union. The event, organized by the UCF Global Perspectives Office, is part of the 2010-2011 “India Speaker Series.” It is free and open to the public.

For Suri, a native of Mumbai, his novels represent an opportunity to showcase India’s complex and multilayered society.

His first novel, “The Death of Vishnu,” won the 2002 Barnes and Noble Discover Prize and was a finalist for the 2002 Pen-Faulkner Award. His second novel, “The Age of Shiva,” was released in 2008 in the United States, the U.K. and India.

He was named by Time magazine as a “Person to Watch” in 2000 and received a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction in 2004. Suri’s fiction has been translated into 24 languages.

In addition to the Global Perspectives Office, sponsors and partners include The India Program at UCF, The Anil and Chitra Deshpande India Program Endowed Fund, Lawrence J. Chastang and the Chastang Foundation, LarsonAllen LLP, the UCF Global Peace and Security Studies Program, the UCF Political Science Department, the UCF International Services Center, UCF LIFE and the Global Connections Foundation.