The Hero's Walk

A Novel

By: Anita Rau Badami

Narrated by: Laara Sadiq

Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

After the release of Anita Rau Badami's critically acclaimed first novel, Tamarind Mem, it was evident a promising new talent had joined the Canadian literary community. Her dazzling literary follow-up is The Hero's Walk, a novel teeming with the author's trademark tumble of the haphazard beauty, wreckage and folly of ordinary lives. Set in the dusty seaside town of Toturpuram on the Bay of Bengal, The Hero's Walk traces the terrain of family and forgiveness through the lives of an exuberant cast of characters bewildered by the rapid pace of change in today's India. Each member of the Rao family pits his or her chance at personal fulfillment against the conventions of a crumbling caste and class system.

Anita Rau Badami explains that "The Hero's Walk is a novel about so many things: loss, disappointment, choices and the importance of coming to terms with yourself and the circumstances of your life without losing the dignity embedded in all of us. At one level it is about heroism - not the hero of the classic epic, those enormous god-sized heroes - but my fascination with the day-to-day heroes and the heroism that's needed to survive all the unexpected disasters and pitfalls of life."

©2000 Anita Rau Badami (P)2019 Penguin Random House Canada

Critic reviews

2001, IMPAC Dublin Award, Long-listed

2016, Canada Reads, Short-listed

"A powerful heady mix of brilliant characters, poignant reality, and a rare depth of emotional integrity and commitment.... This is a book you will want to explore and savour." (The Telegram, St. John's)

"What a treat it is to read Anita Rau Badami.... The Hero's Walk is a novel of a traditional, nearly anachronistic, storytelling-as-transport kind; an escape, an entertainment - that mere but elusive thing most of us, after all, are seeking in good fiction." (National Post)

I was hooked

I would wake up at 4 am because I wanted to know what would happen next