About the Book

In a small town in India, Sripathi Rao receives a call that his daughter has been killed in an accident in Canada, leaving him to raise her child. This prize-winning novel--replete with the color, customs, and contradictions of India--is imbued with a sense of family life that is universal.

Book Synopsis

In a small, dusty town in India, Sripathi Rao struggles as a copywriter to keep his family afloat in their crumbling ancestral home. But his mother berates him for not becoming a lawyer, his son prefers social protest to work, his unmarried sister seethes with repressed desire, and his wife, though subservient, blames him for refusing to communicate with their daughter Maya, who defied tradition, rejecting her proper Brahmin fiancé for a Caucasian husband. Then a phone call brings tragedy: Maya and her husband have been killed in an accident leaving Sripathi to be their daughter's guardian. Sripathi reluctantly travels to Vancouver to bring the child back to India. Nandana has not spoken a word since her parents' death. Terrified, she resists her distant grandfather. Filled with guilt about his daughter but unable to express his feelings, Sripathi finds everything in his life falling apart. But with Nandana's arrival, his world slowly, unexpectedly, finds new hope.

The Hero's Walk is a remarkably intimate novel that fills the senses with the unique textures of India. With humor and keen insight, Anita Rau Badami draws us into her story of the graceful heroism of the ordinary.

Review Quotes

"Engrossing . . . Fascinating . . . This book demands to be read straight through."
-The Washington Post Book World

"DEFT AND KNOWING . . . Badami's prose is lovely, almost poetic, and her ear for dialogue and the idiosyncrasies of her characters' speech rings true. . . . An intimate look into the hearts and minds of a complicated, quarrelsome, yet deeply loving family."
-Richmond Times-Dispatch

"COMPELLING . . .[A] LUSH EVOCATION OF INDIAN LIFE . . . [with] often laugh-out-loud funny dialogue."
-salon.com

"A WONDERFULLY TEXTURED TALE whose poignant events are imbued with truthfulness . . . Badami joins the ranks of such internationally celebrated authors as Michael Ondaaje."
-The London Free Press

About the Author

ANITA RAU BADAMI is the author of four critically acclaimed, bestselling novels: Tamarind Mem, The Hero's Walk, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?, and Tell It to the Trees. Her novels have been published in several countries including the U.K., U.S.A., France, Germany, India, and Spain. She was previously a freelance journalist, and her work has appeared in newspapers and magazines in Canada and abroad. In 2000, she won the Marian Engel Award for excellence in fiction for a body of work. This same year, The Hero's Walk was nominated for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize for Fiction. It also won the 2001 Commonwealth Prize for the Caribbean-Canada region and was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.