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See also www.anitaraubadami.ca
60,000 words hardcover
Finished books now available
Canada: Knopf, Fall 2011
Italy: Edizioni Piemme
(Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay)
Anita Rau Badami’s first novel was the hugely successful bestseller Tamarind Woman. Her bestselling second novel, The Hero’s Walk, won the Regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Italy’s Premio Berto, and was named a Washington Post Best Book of 2001. It was also longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction, and shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize. Both novels have been published in many countries throughout the world. Her third novel, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?, was released in 2006 to great acclaim, longlisted for the IMPAC Award, and a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award. The recipient of the Marian Engel Award for a woman in mid-career, Anita is also a visual artist. She lives in Montreal.
a novel by Anita Badami
A TENSE MYSTERY AND HEART-RENDING STORY OF FAMILY LIFE SET IN AN INDIAN HOUSEHOLD IN A SMALL TOWN IN NORTHERN BC
- Anita tells it to the trees on CBC's The Next Chapter
- Watch Anita on the CBC
- Tell It to the Trees on CBC's All in a Weekend
- Anita blogs in the National Post
- A More magazine book of the month
- 'Why people Tell It to the Trees' - Macleans magazine
- Watch the video trailer on YouTube
One freezing winter morning a dead body is found in the backyard of the Dharma family's house. It's the body of their tenant, Anu Krishnan. Why had she, a stranger to the mountains, been foolish enough to go out into the blizzard? From this gripping opening, Anita Rau Badami threads together a story of love and need, and of chilling secrets never told aloud.
For Anu, seeking a secluded retreat from the city, the Dharmas—the authoritarian Vikram, his aged mother, gentle Suman whom he has brought from the bustling warmth of India in a swiftly arranged marriage, their young daughter, Varsha, and her little brother—are a tightly knit family with values to uphold. The joy of Suman's good Indian cooking, the tales told by old Akka, the beauty of the place, delight her; but she soon realizes that the Dharma family holds unexpected secrets—Suman is a trapped, silent and fearful woman—and the memory of Vikram's first wife who died in an accident casts a long shadow over the household. Anu's arrival will change the balance of the Dharma household, and when the secrets start to spill out, something terrible is bound to happen…
PRAISE FOR Tell It to the Trees
“Badami is deft at building and particularizing those characters fortunate enough to have a voice in her tale.” — THE GLOBE AND MAIL
“Anita Rau Badami's “Tell It to the Trees,” which is about family secrets and the things you do in order to keep both secrets and family. The intensity of the narrative ebbs and flows and creeps—it would be a perfect psychological thriller if it wasn't so very sad.” — HELEN OYEYEMI picks a favourite book of 2011 for The Wall Street Journal
“A riveting read.” — TORONTO SUN
“Part literary whodunit, part psychological drama, Tell It to the Trees is all about solitude and secrets - and how the two can combine to hold a family together; and, at the same time, tear it apart.” — THE WINNIPEG REVIEW
“At first it is a howdunnit, later a whodunnit, but the art of the piece is in the whydunnit.” — THE CALGARY HERALD
“A chilling, cautionary tale at what happens when a family isolates itself against the rest of the world.” — EDMONTON JOURNAL
“Employing a quartet of narrators, Badami creates a multifaceted view of their collective suffering, depicting abuse’s far-reaching tentacles and how they seize an entire family, warping innocence into malevolence and loyalty into captivity. “It is best,” Varsha discloses, “to forget things fast in our house. A long memory makes you sad.” While the author’s previous book, the widely acclaimed Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?, spanned eras and detailed history’s toll on the human heart, here she compresses her sphere to examine this social epidemic and illuminate the myriad intricacies lost behind headlines. Intimately portraying victims, perpetrators, and the delicate brink that can exist between, Tell It to the Trees is a chilling and pertinent read, one that remains frost-burned in the mind after the final page has turned.” — THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT