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The Hero's Walk

A Novel

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The Hero's Walk

Written by: Anita Rau Badami
Narrated by: Laara Sadiq
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About this listen

 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." Asian Creators Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction South Asian Creators World Literature

What the critics say

"A big-hearted and compulsively readable novel. . . . [Badami is] a gifted observer of the human comedy." —Toronto Star

"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

"An unforgettable and heart-wrenching tale." —Ottawa Citizen

"The Hero's Walk is beautifully crafted—rich and lush. . . . It offers bittersweet epiphanies amidst life's tragedies and showcases a novelist on the move." —The Georgia Straight

"[Badami] has an amazing knack for hauling together the beauty, mess, joy and folly of ordinary people's lives." —The Hamilton Spectator

"Its sly wit and penetrating insights illuminate a bittersweet story. . . . [This] is a chronicle that echoes what Graham Greene once called the random shrapnel of human experience." —London Free Press

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This book is one that the more you read it , the more it grows on you. I work in a high school where the grade twelves read it as part of the required reading. Initially, this was the reason that I chose to read it. However, it has become a favourite and I had read it several times before the audio version was available. I love the characters and the way the author visits the difficulties of their lives without it being depressing.
The narrator does a great job, with the nuances of the Indian accent and the pronunciation of the names and places in India. However, I was disappointed that it was not narrated by the author herself as She did for her novel Tamarind Mem.
This book is not a page turner, rather one that encourages reflection and begs to be read more than once. After reading it, It becomes obvious why it was one of the books that was a strong contender for a previous year in the Canada Reads contest.

One of My Faves!

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