Anita Rau Badami is a best-selling author whose books “Tamarind Mem” and “The Hero’s Walk” have charmed readers and critics alike. Her most recent literary effort is “Tell It to the Trees,” a novel involving family and mystery set on the backdrop of northern British Columbia.
WatchMojo - Give us an idea of your background and the importance of stories in your life, so we can give context to your work.
Anita Rau Badami - I lived in India as a child and my father was in the Indian Railways which meant we traveled a lot and often ended up in remote towns with nothing much to do. But there were always stories to be found — local tales about people in the town, unbelievable life stories, folk tales from dozens of different traditions, myths and literature — oral and written, all of which I absorbed with delight. My father and his siblings were great story-tellers and yarn-spinners as well. An uncle might step out for a cigarette and return with a grand tale of adventure that had befallen him on his brief trip to the store. So I grew up with a sense of the power of the imagination and of words to create or transform and soon enough I began to tell stories myself.
WM - What themes were you aiming to capture in “Tell It to the Trees.”
ARB - I cannot really claim to have had any thematic intent while writing my novel. I was exploring the ways in which love and hate can be two sides of the same coin and how extremes of either emotion can warp the psyche of members of a family.
WM - Tell us about the family dynamic within the story.
ARB - All I am willing to say is that it is strange and uneasy. The rest is up to the reader to discover.
WM - Your other novels have been acclaimed, and this one has been highly anticipated: do you feel this pressure when writing?
ARB - No, not when I am writing — then the pressure comes from within, to meet my own expectations, so to speak. I start worrying about reactions from readers and critics after the book is done and it is too late to take it back, tear it up and rewrite it! So either way it isn’t a very comfortable kind of job except when the writing is singing. There is no feeling in the world that’s better than that, I think.
ANITA RAU BADAMI’s first novel was the bestseller Tamarind Mem. 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 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.
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