num_pages: 368
description: After the release of Anita Rau Badami's critically acclaimed first novel, Tamarind Women, 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."
language: English
title: The Hero's Walk
titlecomplete: The Hero's Walk
genres: Literary Fiction, Literature, Fiction, Asia, Contemporary, India, Canadian Literature, Canada, Indian Literature, Read For School
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: Vintage