Publisher's Synopsis
"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**
