description: The Hero's Walk , the second novel by Anita Rau Badami, is a big, intimate book, the kind that seldom strays beyond the doors of a single residence. Set in the sweltering streets of Toturpuram, a small city on the Bay of Bengal, The Hero's Walk , which won the 2001 Commonwealth Writers Prize for best book in Canada and the Caribbean, explores the troubled life of Sripathi Rao, an unremarkable, middle-aged family man and advertising copywriter. As The Hero's Walk opens, Sripathi's life is already in a state of thorough disrepair. His mother, a domineering, half-senile octogenarian, sits like a tyrant at the top of his household, frightening off his sister's suitors, chastising him for not having become a doctor, and brandishing her hypochondria and paranoia with sinister abandon. It is Sripathi's children, however, who pose the biggest Arun, his son, is becoming dangerously involved in political activism, and Maya, his daughter, broke off her arranged engagement to a local man in order to wed a white Canadian. Sripathi's troubles come to a head when Maya and her husband are killed in an automobile accident, leaving their 7- year-old daughter, Nandana, without Canadian kin. Sripathi travels to Canada and brings his granddaughter home, while his family is shaken by a series of calamities that may, eventually, bring peace to their lives. --Jack Illingworth
language: English
title: The Hero's Walk
titlecomplete: The Hero's Walk
genres: Fiction, Indian Literature, Asia, Canadian Literature, Canada, India, Literature, Read For School, Contemporary, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 3955
places: India
awards: awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Longlist, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Commonwealth Writers' Prize
category: Best Book in Caribbean and Canada, awardedAt: 1451635200000
name: CBC Canada Reads, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Kiriyama Prize
category: Fiction
publisher: Bloomsbury