When Memory Dies [Paperback]

A. Sivanandan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1997

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

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. Eric Robbins

From Kirkus Reviews

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 guerrillas``Tamil Tigers''fight for independence from the majority, the Buddhist Sinhalese. Sivanandan carefully explores the causes of the civil war. Hes 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 shes 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 the old 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. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Arcadia Books (January 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 190085001X
• ISBN-13: 978-1900850018
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,880,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When Memory Dies, August 3, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: When Memory Dies (Paperback)

Sivanandan's book is a vivid telling of three generations of a Sri Lankan Tamil family and of the disintegration of ethnic harmony on the island. Having fled Sri Lanka after the 1956 riots Sivanandan's novel is remarkably even-handed and captures the humanity on both sides. Sri Lanka's post-colonial history is one of failed expectations and avoidable disasters. Sivanandan thoughtfully sketches the path to Sri Lanka's civil war and the painful breakdown in relations between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. The tragedy of the estrangement between some of the key Sinhalese and Tamil characters in the novel is all the more poignant considering that Sinhalese nationalism and Tamil Eelam nationalism are painfully intertwined. I wonder if the title "When Memory Dies" is an allusion to the fact that Sinhala-Tamil enmity in Sri Lanka is less than a hundred years old and was preceded by about 2500 years when ethnicity did not matter?

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Historical fiction at a high level of sophistication., July 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: When Memory Dies (Paperback)

I have used this book as an introduction to the contemporary political and cultural history of Sri Lanka for college students who will be studying on the island for the academic year. In some ways, it is a somewhat cynical rendering of the evolution of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. That is, it is difficult to come away from reading it with much of a sense of hope for the current political situation. But it is precisely the evocation of hopelessness that makes Sivanandan's compelling novel realistic, as unfortunate as that sounds. Idealism, indeed, seems to have little space in Sri Lanka these days. There is much in this novel that educates its readers to the nature of ethnic conflict, class consciousness, caste, family, religion and political identity. I found it a tour de force, a remarkable novel.

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommend, August 17, 2011

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petro - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: When Memory Dies (Paperback)

This is an historical novel of Sri Lanka from just before independence to the beginning of the recent war. It looks at many of the underlying factors around the war, the JVP uprising, and life in general in this society. Highly recommend to anyone interested in this part of the world.