Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?

Name: Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?
Brand: Penguin Random House
Availability: InStock
Author: Anita Rau Badami
ISBN: 9780735275621

Author: Anita Rau Badami

Narrator: Anita Rau Badami

Unabridged: 12 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Vintage Canada

Published: 01/21/2020

Categories: Fiction, Family Life, Cultural Fiction, Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

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 fifty 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 heartrendingly connected.

About The Author

ANITA RAU BADAMI's first novel was the bestseller Tamarind Woman. Her bestselling second novel, The Hero's Walk, won the Regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize and Italy's Premio Berto, was named a Washington Post Best Book, was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction, and was a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize. Her third novel, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?, was released in 2006 to great acclaim, longlisted for the IMPAC Award, and named a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award. The recipient of the Marian Engel Award for a woman writer in mid-career, Badami is also a visual artist. She lives in Montreal.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Shane

The author captures the various inflections points in India’s political history: the partition from Pakistan, the conflicts with its neighbours China and Pakistan, the separation of Bangladesh, the military invasion of the Golden Temple, the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the brutal killings of......more

Goodreads review by Gina

I really enjoy the writing style of Anita Rau Badami and will read more of her books. I read the background first, found at the back of this book, which helped to understand the historical events that prompted this story. Although it is sad, and even more so than a regular novel, because this could......more

Goodreads review by Nidhi

“It was maps that caused countries to exist and expire; maps caused bitter wars, maps erased people and landscapes as effeciently as they created them” - Anita Rau Badami Although Badami’s novel was already on my TBR list, I had attended Nalini Iyer’s talk on diaspora and the Partition recently and......more

Quotes

"Pulsates with humanity. . . . If you do manage to put this novel down, it’s probably only to compose yourself to keep on reading."
–Edmonton Journal

"Like Canada, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? may be read on many levels, each of which illuminates a little more of who we are. . . . Rich in echoes and irony and questions, this is one book in the growing catalogue of books we need to read to understand ourselves."
–The Globe and Mail

"As Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? shows, the enduring state of ‘in-between’ that is part of both immigrant life in Canada and Sikh life in post-partition India is equally rich in the complex joy of struggle and the possibility for tension, misunderstanding, and, sometimes, violence."
–Calgary Herald

"Anita Rau Badami has scored again with Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?"
–Edmonton Journal

"Nightbird brilliantly tells the timeless story of immigrants who face hardship as they try to build new lives, straddling two worlds and never really fitting into either."
–The Vancouver Sun

Praise for The Hero’s Walk:
"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)

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

Awards

City of Vancouver Book Award
IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
OLA Evergreen Award