Sripathi Rao, the protagonist of Anita Rau Badami's second novel, is an ordinary, middle-aged man whose career and family have failed to meet his expectations. But when his daughter and her husband are suddenly killed in a car crash, his world and his priorities turn upside down. Set in a small town in the Bay of Bengal during a time of cultural change, The Hero's Walk is a lyrical, affecting story about the complexity of family ties.

The Hero's Walk won the 2001 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book, Caribbean and Canada.