When Memory Dies

by A. Sivanandan

Overview

"Haunting, with an immense tenderness . . . Unforgettable" JOHN BERGER

"I'm recommending When Memory Dies to everyone" ARTHUR C. CLARKE

"Profoundly moving" Evening Standard

"A brilliant and moving first novel" Times Literary Supplement

A powerful three-generational saga of a Sri Lankan family's search for coherence and continuity in a country broken by colonial occupation and riven by ethnic wars.

Through the viewpoints of three generations of a Sri Lankan family (taking the reader from 1920 through the 1980s), Sivanandan explores a culture destroyed first by colonization, then through the ethnic divisions that are released when the country achieves independence.

The family, which lives at a level of poverty that makes survival a constant struggle, must also balance love for one another with a deep love of their homeland. Without bending to romanticism or proselytization, the author evokes a compelling and very human story of a lost country. It is a vision as beautifully told as it is unrelenting in its devotion to truth. In the process, the work also supplies a rich historic background to the often underreported news accounts of the massacres and upheavals in Sri Lanka.

**Winner of the Sagittarius Prize **Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize**

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781905147595
Publisher:	Hodder
Publication date:	08/30/2007
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

A. (AMBALAVANER) SIVANANDAN was born in 1923 and came to Britain from Sri Lanka in the wake of the race riots of 1958 - and walked straight into the riots of Notting Hill. Since then he wrote and lectured extensively on Black and Third World issues and published two collections of essays, A Different Hunger and Communities of Resistance. His novel When Memory Dies (1997) was winner of the 1998 Commonwealth Writers' Prize in the Best First Book category. Sivanandan was founder editor of the journal Race & Class and director of the Institute of Race Relations in London. He died in 2018.

Editorial Reviews

This rich novel, peopled with unforgettable heroines and heroes, will haunt the reader's mind—David Rose, Observer

Haunting, with an immense tenderness. The extraordinary poetic tact of this book makes it unforgettable—John Berger, Guardian

There is no rallying cry here, no dwelling on the tragedies of the individual, only an exhortation to memory and constant effort. Sivanandan's sensibilities and instincts are endlessly humane, generous and perceptive—Literary Review

Profoundly moving . . . Sivanandan triumphs in his evocation of a beautiful country he perceives as doomed. His love for the country he has lost is the driving passion of his work'—Evening Standard

This is not just a book about Sri Lanka. The struggles it touches upon, both moral and political, face us all: the battle between our hunger for love or learning or success and our need, even passion, for integrity. This is a book of, and about, many lifetimes'—Independent

A brilliant and moving first novel. With a grandeur reminiscent of the great Indonesian novelist, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Sivanandan takes the reader through three generations of a Sri Lankan family. As we move from the days of the hartal in 1920 through independence in 1948 to the neo-liberal pangs of the 1980s, Sri Lankan communalism gathers force like a conquering flood—Times Literary Supplement

An extraordinary storyteller who has total control over his material—Athol Fugard

Sivanandan's theme - the baneful influence of colonialism - is highly political, but he writes with such humanity that what could be dry fact and ideology is transformed into a gripping and inspiring action—Kate Chisholm, Sunday Telegraph

I'm recommending When Memory Dies to everyone—Arthur C. Clarke

From the Publisher

First published in Britain, a novel that movingly details how three generations of idealists try to find meaning and purpose as their country, Sri Lanka, becomes another killing field. The author, born in Sri Lanka, infuses the story with palpable feeling for his country and its plight. Once a place of shared values and tolerance, the tropical island is now riven by sectarian violence as the Hindu guerrillasþ"Tamil Tigers"þfight for independence from the majority, the Buddhist Sinhalese. Sivanandan carefully explores the causes of the civil war. Heþs often less successful, though, with the characters, most of whom are Tamil. Many seem more like fleshed-out representations of ideas and historical forces than complex human beings. The narrative focuses on three men: Sahadevan, his son Rajan, and Rajan's stepson Vijay. Sahadevan, who was born in a northern Tamil village where drought and crop failure were endemic, leaves the countryside to get an education, and works for the post office in the last years of British colonial rule. He and his friends are socialists who dream of a fair and just society. Son Rajan, born in 1930, an idealist like his father, becomes a schoolteacher, but during his life, post-independence dreams wither as politicians enrich themselves and cynically foment divisions. When his wife Lali, a Sinhalese, is raped and killed by Sinhalese vigilantes who think sheþs a Tamil, he despairingly flees to Britain. And finally Vijay, who is lovingly reared by his old grandparents, joins the rebels as a student, teaches, marries unhappily, and, while trying to save his rapidly disintegrating country, gets caught in the cross-currents and dies near theold family home. At times the melodrama—too many people die on cue—undercuts what is essentially an anguished tale of dying dreams and hopes deferred. Instructive and deeply felt.

Kirkus Reviews