‘Tender, arresting and uplifting.’
SHANKARI CHANDRAN

The most unexpected friendships really can transform your life.

Malli has an anxiety disorder that renders her unable to speak outside her own home. The highlight of her life is a long-standing weekly phone call with her younger brother, Surya, who is studying in Australia, and whose updates bring colour to her days. When Surya misses their weekly call for the first time, Malli’s quiet life is thrown into disarray.

Seeking answers online, Malli is grateful when a user on a missing persons forum, Nayan, offers to help. As days pass without word from Surya, Malli decides she must travel to Australia to find out what has happened to him, and the unconventional and outspoken Nayan offers to accompany her.

In Sydney, student life is less glamorous and more precarious than Surya had imagined. At the restaurant where he lives and works, Surya feels he can endure the squalid living conditions and the abysmal pay if it will secure him the elusive work visa which will allow him to stay in the country. But when a racist customer up-ends the knife-edge hierarchy at the restaurant, it sets off a chain of events that will see Surya committing a reckless act of love, risking everything for which he has worked so hard.

Set between Bangalore and Sydney, The Days Toppled Over is a powerful exploration of mental health, family, connecting and how international students live in Australia. With a rich sense of place, a memorable cast of characters, and a good dose of humour, it illuminates how we all need friends and contact with other humans – and how these simple things can result in transformation.

Vidya Madabushi is an Indian writer living in Sydney. She has an M.A. Degree in Creative Writing from the University of Sydney, and her first novel, Bystanders, was published in India in 2015. Bystanders was shortlisted for the Tibor Jones South Asia Prize, and a previous version was long-listed for the Australian Vogel Award. In 2018, Vidya received the Writing NSW Grant for Fiction for the creation of this novel. The Days Toppled Over will mark her Australian debut.