Fifteen-year-old Chidambaram has just killed a man. His victim is a powerful landowner who had murdered his beloved elder brother and torn his family apart. Now the teenager is on the run with his father, wandering around in the hills and forests that skirt their town. Boy and man spend their days hiding, talking, foraging for food. Mainly they look back on the past, both happy and sad and reflect on their present predicament. Hailed as one of the great Tamil novels of the last century, heat brings alive the world of rural Tamil Nadu, its beauty and brutality, through the ordeal of a family. Heart-breaking, gripping and colourful, it is a literary work of great force and beauty.