Showing results by author "Anita Rau Badami" in All Categories

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. 

One freezing winter morning a dead body is found in the backyard of the Dharma family’s house. It’s the body of Anu Krishnan. For Anu, a writer seeking a secluded retreat from the city, the Dharmas' "back-house" in the sleepy mountain town of Merrit's Point was the ideal spot to take a year off and begin writing. She had found the Dharmas' rental through a happy coincidence. Anu vaguely remembered Vikram from university but had a strong recollection of his wife Helen, a beautiful, vivacious, social, and charming woman. But now Vikram had a new wife, a marriage hastily arranged in India after Helen was killed in a car accident.

Anita Rau Badami's acclaimed novel Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? chronicles the stories of three women, linked in love and tragedy, over a span of 50 years, sweeping from the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 to the explosion of Air India flight 182 off the coast of Ireland in 1985. Alive with Badami's warmth and humanity, and brimming with the daily sights and sounds of both Canada and India, this novel brilliantly conveys the tumultuous effects of the past on new immigrants, and the ways in which memory and myth, the personal and the political, become connected.

A beautiful and brilliant portrait of two generations of women. Set in India’s railway colonies, this is the story of Kamini and her mother, Saroja, nicknamed Tamarind Mem due to her sour tongue. While in Canada beginning her graduate studies, Kamini receives a postcard from her mother saying she has sold their home and is traveling through India.