Product Description

The Buddha taught that to live is to experience suffering. Few family sagas, especially first ones, have captured this aspect of suffering and so many other truths in as lyric a fashion as "When Memory Dies." 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #200133 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 600 pages

Review
"Haunting and immense tenderness. the extraordinary poetic tact of this book makes it unforgettable" - John Berger, The Guardian"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" - Melissa Benn, The Independent"This rich novel, peopled with unforgettable heroines and heroes, will haunt the reader's mind"- David Rose, The observer"A brilliant and moving first novel" - TLS

About the Author
A. Sivanandan came to Britain from Ceylon in the wake of the race riots of 1958 - and walked straight into the riots of Notting Hill. Since then he has written and lectured extensively on Black and Third World issues. He is the founder editor of the journal Race & Class and director of the Institute of Race Relations in London. When Memory Dies, his first novel (1997), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and won the Sagittarius Prize.

Customer Reviews

One of my favourites
This book is both insightful and beautiful. As someone with sri lankan roots, the characters never seemed two dimensional to me, but instead seemed incredibly familiar. Sivanandan portrays their thoughts and feelings with an understated elegance. This fits, as in my experience, tamil culture especially, and sri lankan culture, perhaps, is not overly demonstrative.

Most of all, there is a real evenness of tone - the book lays bare the real tragedy of sri lanka, that at its heart it is a place where both tamils and sinhalese have lived side by side for years, intermarried for centuries, have tried to build a future together, but are being manipulated by forces outside their control. The last part of the book, covering the massacre of JVP activits in the south, and the uprising of tamils in the north, show the real parallels between disaffected members of both communities. Gorgeously written.

Not the best of reads....
This book whilst making many important political points is not a great novel. It feels like a political textbook has been turned into poor fiction. Each character represents a view point and most of the people in the book are thinner than the paper they are written on. You never feel that you like any of the people in the book, they are all used as a means to an end by the author. Not a great novel to read for fun, but is easier than most post-colonial textbooks so suffices in that respect.

Enjoyable AND educational - a strange combination!
The Tamil-Sinhalese conflict is one that remains largely ignored and misunderstood by the western world. By telling us a simple story, Sivanandan is able to convey the very real problems faced by Tamils and Sinhalese alike. I was glad to see that someone has at last shed some truth upon the history of the conflict in an easily digestible form.

It is an enjoyable and easy read and what's more, you'll learn something without even realising you're being taught.