What do you think?
Rate this book
When Memory Dies
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.
420 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 18, 2007
57 people are currently reading
1079 people want to read
About the author
Ambalavaner Sivanandan
17 books31 followersAmbalavaner Sivanandan is director of the Institute of Race Relations and editor of Race & Class. His fiction includes When Memory Dies, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and winner of the Sagittarius Prize, and Where the Dance Is, both published by Arcadia Books.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
October 1, 2013
I'm headed to Sri Lanka in a month, and I am so glad that I picked this book to read pre-trip. The story of this island nation unfolds through the lives of three generations of a family, from Colonial times to almost up to present day. This is not a fast read, and is often depressing, disturbing, and heart breaking. But then given the civil war that ravaged the nation, that is to be expected. I learned much about the political, economic, social, and racial landscape, and have had vivid dreams the entire time I was reading this book. Not pleasant ones either. Would recommend this book to those visiting Sri Lanka, or anyone trying to get a handle on some of the island's history and culture. To quote the author: When memory dies, a people die.
January 1, 2018
The book traces three generations of a Ceylon/Sri Lanka family starting in the early 1900s. The strength of the book is it's clarity of the country's history and the causes of the brutal civil war.
The first part was almost documentary with a few pieces of dialogue. The second and third parts became more personnel as it follows the treatment of the Tamils, religious divisions, the problems in the caste system and the differences in the north and south. Each part ends in a sudden, brutal death.
My only criticism was the occasional long diversions into a character falling in love, falling out of love or just stifled by forbidden love.
The first part was almost documentary with a few pieces of dialogue. The second and third parts became more personnel as it follows the treatment of the Tamils, religious divisions, the problems in the caste system and the differences in the north and south. Each part ends in a sudden, brutal death.
My only criticism was the occasional long diversions into a character falling in love, falling out of love or just stifled by forbidden love.
May 10, 2017
I read this a long time ago, but it is a book that left lasting memories - this is a complex, brilliant, heartbreaking and human story of the conflict in Sri Lanka and its roots, told mostly from the Tamil perspective
March 24, 2020
This is an utterly heartbreaking novel about the lead up to the civil war in Sri Lanka and the experiences of different groups of people. The story is told over 3 generations - which certainly means this is a long read- and I feel that it was the perfect way to put the gradual change in the attitudes of Sri Lankans into perspective. You will certainly grow with the characters, learn with them and also inevitably be broken down alongside them.
I particularly loved the thought Sivanandan put into character building, and the formation of so many intricate relationships. Everyone simply felt so real and I particularly admire the way the three main characters are not built into heroes, which makes the story so much more relatable.
It is certainly a long read, and it will definitely devastate you. The writing is simply spectacular: I have visited Sri Lanka and the beautiful descriptions of the land takes me right back.
If you are interested in learning more about Sri Lankan politics, this book will teach you a lot -and if you're not much of an expert, be prepared to look up a lot of things (like me).
Overall, it is one of the best books I have read - it is certainly close to my heart being Tamil myself. From the little childhood stories, to the drastic way each of the 3 parts end, I was able to form a connection with this book and reading 'When Memory Dies' has given me some sort of fullfillment.
September 29, 2019
Dear Mr.Sivanandan
Regretfully I have to state that we as a nation never recovered from the divide and rule method imposed upon us by our colonial masters.
In fact the divisions have now festered beyond repair.
But , I thank you for this book which detailed the lives and times of 3 generations of Sri Lankans from the end of 19th century to part of 20th century.
In the 21st century We are still deeply divided, politically bereft and morally bankrupt than ever before.
Your novel is a great reminder of all the mistakes we have made as a nation.
What saddens me is that we have not learned much from those mistakes. We keep on repeating them.
Maybe it’s because all the past memories are dying ....
You know how it is ..
“When Memory Dies , a People Die “ and when we try to make false memories it’s like committing murder.
I hope most of us can hold on to our true memories till we end !
Bless Your Soul Sir
Yours N.
Regretfully I have to state that we as a nation never recovered from the divide and rule method imposed upon us by our colonial masters.
In fact the divisions have now festered beyond repair.
But , I thank you for this book which detailed the lives and times of 3 generations of Sri Lankans from the end of 19th century to part of 20th century.
In the 21st century We are still deeply divided, politically bereft and morally bankrupt than ever before.
Your novel is a great reminder of all the mistakes we have made as a nation.
What saddens me is that we have not learned much from those mistakes. We keep on repeating them.
Maybe it’s because all the past memories are dying ....
You know how it is ..
“When Memory Dies , a People Die “ and when we try to make false memories it’s like committing murder.
I hope most of us can hold on to our true memories till we end !
Bless Your Soul Sir
Yours N.
October 3, 2011
Reality is so depressing.
April 11, 2019
This book is awful. If it’s not for the hugely exposition heavy dialogue and massive amounts of ‘telling not showing’ then it’s the fact that every female character is introduced with a description of their breasts.
July 24, 2012
One of my all time faves. So much of this book made me feel, made me think and made me introspect. I would read it again, when I have nothing to rush me. It deserves my whole-hearted attention.
January 1, 2024
For those more familiar with A Sivanandan's pathfinding work at the Institute, When Memory Dies excavates from his own experience the human textures of that "stretching" of Marxism he would come to be so renowned for. The sharpness and conviction which would come characterise his
analyses of Thatcherism, Black struggle, and neocolonialism were deeply informed by the (post)colonial experience of Sri Lanka, where Siva would be forced to flee in 1959 amidst anti-Tamil pogroms, only to walk straight into the Notting Hill whiteness riots. Siva's "Political Blackness" would come to capture the continuity of this experience, from the "coolie" Tamil labourers of Sri Lanka's upcountry tea plantations, chased off the estates and brutalised by fascist mobs of Sinhalese-Buddhist vigilantes, to the subsumption and subjugation of postwar migrant labour into metropolitan capital, too with deadly consequence. Both sanctioned by state and colonial capital, When Memory Dies narrates the revolutionary hopes and struggles for socialism in Sri Lanka.
Narrating three successive generations' 'coming to consciousness,' the first, Sahadevan, finds himself politicised amidst the trade union movement of the early twentieth century. Within the emergent movement the toxic seeds of communalism remained, which first sewn by the British through over a centuries labour force differentiation and segregation, instead found themselves nurtured by a petit-bourgeois leadership and nationalist political platform. Having been mired as "foreign invaders," Indian-descendent Tamils, now in their third or forth generations as labourers on upcountry tea estates, were quickly disenfranchised by the independence government of 1948. Even when they were facing deportation to lands they had never seen, there was little resistance from the unions, its leaders quickly siphoned off into parliamentary politics.
The next decades would fix in place that communalist matrix, rendering the nation of Sri Lanka as Sinhala and Buddhist. This settlement, Siva notes elsewhere, would open the country up once more to colonial capital, regimes of trade liberalisation saw rice fields replaced with Pineapples for American export, foreign investment saw new Free Trade Zones for friends-of-friends, and of course, a "socialist" IMF loan or two, for when times got really tough. Meanwhile, anti-Tamil racism had quickly become institutionalised into education, curriculum, and employment, soon turning to violence in the street, at the University, and in estate line-rooms, to be met with police indifference, if not corroboration. When sporadic acts of violence turned into state-sponsored pogroms, Tamils were forced to migrate north.
By the late 1970s, driven by necessity, the Tamil youth had picked up arms. At this historical conjuncture, communalist politics had given way to fascism, laying bare the genocidal ends of a Sinhala-supremacy now instituted at each level of social existence; the economic, the political, and the ideological. Sinhala politicians made no secret of their eliminationist fantasies, flanked by a now institutionalised Buddhist clergy, "Terrorists have to be killed because they are terrorists. They are like mad dogs and no better than that," one would proclaim. Para explained what this all meant for Tamil youth, "the British took away their past, the Sinhalese took away their future. All they have is the present. And that makes them dangerous." And so, amidst the pogroms, poverty, mass incarceration, and disenfranchisement, in the hot despair of presentness, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were born. These freedom fighters would go on to wage guerrilla warfare against the Sinhala state for some three decades, demanding (and for some time controlling) a separate Tamil state of Eelam in the North and East of the island. There could be no compromise between liberation and annihilation.
The book closes where it started, in Jaffna, with a poignant reminder for struggles in our current moment. As new global mass movements buttress a Palestinian resistance seen now by so many as the vanguard for collective liberation, our imagining otherwise cannot "wait" for power to be taken. Socialism does not come after liberation, Vijay comes to understand, but is rather "the process through which liberation is won." Siva's narration of the successive failures of even the most revolutionary social formations to account for the most marginalised and subjugated workers is reminder for us to centre those voices. Only in and through the historical process of revolution itself do we find the inversion of the social fabric, it is not a "question" to answer some way down the line. We must move obliquely to the settled (and settler) parameters of struggle.
Beautiful and heart-wrenching in equal measure, it is struggle, love, and hope that prevails.
Rest in Power Siva
analyses of Thatcherism, Black struggle, and neocolonialism were deeply informed by the (post)colonial experience of Sri Lanka, where Siva would be forced to flee in 1959 amidst anti-Tamil pogroms, only to walk straight into the Notting Hill whiteness riots. Siva's "Political Blackness" would come to capture the continuity of this experience, from the "coolie" Tamil labourers of Sri Lanka's upcountry tea plantations, chased off the estates and brutalised by fascist mobs of Sinhalese-Buddhist vigilantes, to the subsumption and subjugation of postwar migrant labour into metropolitan capital, too with deadly consequence. Both sanctioned by state and colonial capital, When Memory Dies narrates the revolutionary hopes and struggles for socialism in Sri Lanka.
Narrating three successive generations' 'coming to consciousness,' the first, Sahadevan, finds himself politicised amidst the trade union movement of the early twentieth century. Within the emergent movement the toxic seeds of communalism remained, which first sewn by the British through over a centuries labour force differentiation and segregation, instead found themselves nurtured by a petit-bourgeois leadership and nationalist political platform. Having been mired as "foreign invaders," Indian-descendent Tamils, now in their third or forth generations as labourers on upcountry tea estates, were quickly disenfranchised by the independence government of 1948. Even when they were facing deportation to lands they had never seen, there was little resistance from the unions, its leaders quickly siphoned off into parliamentary politics.
The next decades would fix in place that communalist matrix, rendering the nation of Sri Lanka as Sinhala and Buddhist. This settlement, Siva notes elsewhere, would open the country up once more to colonial capital, regimes of trade liberalisation saw rice fields replaced with Pineapples for American export, foreign investment saw new Free Trade Zones for friends-of-friends, and of course, a "socialist" IMF loan or two, for when times got really tough. Meanwhile, anti-Tamil racism had quickly become institutionalised into education, curriculum, and employment, soon turning to violence in the street, at the University, and in estate line-rooms, to be met with police indifference, if not corroboration. When sporadic acts of violence turned into state-sponsored pogroms, Tamils were forced to migrate north.
By the late 1970s, driven by necessity, the Tamil youth had picked up arms. At this historical conjuncture, communalist politics had given way to fascism, laying bare the genocidal ends of a Sinhala-supremacy now instituted at each level of social existence; the economic, the political, and the ideological. Sinhala politicians made no secret of their eliminationist fantasies, flanked by a now institutionalised Buddhist clergy, "Terrorists have to be killed because they are terrorists. They are like mad dogs and no better than that," one would proclaim. Para explained what this all meant for Tamil youth, "the British took away their past, the Sinhalese took away their future. All they have is the present. And that makes them dangerous." And so, amidst the pogroms, poverty, mass incarceration, and disenfranchisement, in the hot despair of presentness, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were born. These freedom fighters would go on to wage guerrilla warfare against the Sinhala state for some three decades, demanding (and for some time controlling) a separate Tamil state of Eelam in the North and East of the island. There could be no compromise between liberation and annihilation.
The book closes where it started, in Jaffna, with a poignant reminder for struggles in our current moment. As new global mass movements buttress a Palestinian resistance seen now by so many as the vanguard for collective liberation, our imagining otherwise cannot "wait" for power to be taken. Socialism does not come after liberation, Vijay comes to understand, but is rather "the process through which liberation is won." Siva's narration of the successive failures of even the most revolutionary social formations to account for the most marginalised and subjugated workers is reminder for us to centre those voices. Only in and through the historical process of revolution itself do we find the inversion of the social fabric, it is not a "question" to answer some way down the line. We must move obliquely to the settled (and settler) parameters of struggle.
Beautiful and heart-wrenching in equal measure, it is struggle, love, and hope that prevails.
Rest in Power Siva
May 10, 2020
A heartbreaking and honest portrayal of life, death and the unending cycle of struggle and strife on the island. Sivanandan, in the telling of a three generational story, beautifully captures how easily time steals away at us and erodes our stories. How much we must guard against the undoing and forceful remaking of our individual and collective memories.
August 10, 2024
This book bruk me
April 12, 2015
Read this while visiting Sri Lanka. Difficult to imagine these atrocities occurring among these gentle people, although evidence of the army is everywhere. A good history of these troubles - the specifics vary, but the drill is the same the world over: Ireland, Middle East, our own United States. Will we ever learn?
October 19, 2008
An inspirational and moving story of a family from Sri Lanka that culminates in a description of the Notting Hill riots of 1958. Beautifully written by the former editor of RACE AND CLASS and a literary masterpiece.
June 2, 2025
A heartbreaking history depicted through an intergenerational family saga - chatting the history of Ceylon during the end of British rule, independence, the birth of the Sinhalese Sri Lankan state, and the beginning of the fight for Eelam.
Sivanandan writes so beautifully, with care and grace for each main character it's hard not to feel like these are very real people. Inspired no doubt by countless lives and experiences, culminating in complex justice driven characters that challenge perception of communality, discuss mixed race marriages, and what it means to truly remember.
Who remembers when the community grew, laughed and loved alongside one another? The colonial fracturing of a nation created a tinderbox ready to blow - and a people distrusting of one another, scared of their neighbours, fueled by racialised hatred.
This book has left a stain on my memory, the complexities of fighting for justice, freedom and socialism close to over a century are laid out so plainly by Sivanandan - creating and fostering a dialogue aimed at understanding one another, in every small detail, whilst outlining the oppressive powers aimed at disenfranchising large groups into powerless individuals.
Reading from the perspective of someone raised in the colonial power that wrecked havoc and destroyed memory, it's important to remember: "The British took away their past, the Sinhalese their future. All they have is the present. And that's what makes them dangerous."
Despite the fantastic themes of community, resistance, and love - Sivanandan does not do justice for the women characters in this book. They are presented as incredibly impactful and important to the men in their lives but lack a well roundedness that graces the main characters of Sahadevan, Rajan and Vijay.
Sivanandan writes so beautifully, with care and grace for each main character it's hard not to feel like these are very real people. Inspired no doubt by countless lives and experiences, culminating in complex justice driven characters that challenge perception of communality, discuss mixed race marriages, and what it means to truly remember.
Who remembers when the community grew, laughed and loved alongside one another? The colonial fracturing of a nation created a tinderbox ready to blow - and a people distrusting of one another, scared of their neighbours, fueled by racialised hatred.
This book has left a stain on my memory, the complexities of fighting for justice, freedom and socialism close to over a century are laid out so plainly by Sivanandan - creating and fostering a dialogue aimed at understanding one another, in every small detail, whilst outlining the oppressive powers aimed at disenfranchising large groups into powerless individuals.
Reading from the perspective of someone raised in the colonial power that wrecked havoc and destroyed memory, it's important to remember: "The British took away their past, the Sinhalese their future. All they have is the present. And that's what makes them dangerous."
Despite the fantastic themes of community, resistance, and love - Sivanandan does not do justice for the women characters in this book. They are presented as incredibly impactful and important to the men in their lives but lack a well roundedness that graces the main characters of Sahadevan, Rajan and Vijay.
May 28, 2025
Three generations of a family in the civil-war-torn history of Sri Lanka. The first “volume” (the colonial years) sets the scene in a generally “soft” way, with lots of detail about “ordinary” things. With the succeeding generations, the story tone becomes increasingly harsh and bitter, as only civil wars can be.
T
The “story” documents the turbulent times and its impact on the inhabitants, the manipulation by people of power to create and then fuel divisions.
This is the third novel about Sri Lanka that I have read recently, somehow in what feels with hindsight to be in reverse order! When Memory Dies explains the long and unhappy recent history of conflict on the island, a framework that helps understand the environment for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida and Brotherless Night.
They are all worth reading.
T
The “story” documents the turbulent times and its impact on the inhabitants, the manipulation by people of power to create and then fuel divisions.
This is the third novel about Sri Lanka that I have read recently, somehow in what feels with hindsight to be in reverse order! When Memory Dies explains the long and unhappy recent history of conflict on the island, a framework that helps understand the environment for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida and Brotherless Night.
They are all worth reading.
September 22, 2025
The first half of the story was not exactly to my taste (way too slow), although it gives some nice outlooks on the Sri Lankan popular culture and sets the stage for the big piece : the slow brooding and hatching of the civil war.
The story telling over 3 generations makes it possible to grasp how things turned wrong socially and politically on the long run to finally bring about segregation and pogroms over the Tamil minority.
This is a nicely and finely described case of fascism outburst, built up on race (Sinhalese), language (Sinhala) and religion (Buddhism). Interestingly, this was all cooked up by the Socialists... of course soon devoted to the merchant economy, capitalism and oligarchy. History repeats as one says. Look right. But don't forget to look left: racial hate has not political color.
The story telling over 3 generations makes it possible to grasp how things turned wrong socially and politically on the long run to finally bring about segregation and pogroms over the Tamil minority.
This is a nicely and finely described case of fascism outburst, built up on race (Sinhalese), language (Sinhala) and religion (Buddhism). Interestingly, this was all cooked up by the Socialists... of course soon devoted to the merchant economy, capitalism and oligarchy. History repeats as one says. Look right. But don't forget to look left: racial hate has not political color.
September 26, 2020
Heartbreaking. A multi-generation family saga set against the backdrop of the colonial and post-colonial history. If you want to understand Sri Lanka's history of the past 100 years and the ethnic conflict, read this book.
April 28, 2025
This was a really interesting topic. I learned a little bit about Sri Lankan history, but I felt like more context could have been provided for those not familiar. Overall, this book was a bit too verbose and slow moving for me.
Read
July 9, 2020My second attempt at reading it. This time got through book one/ a third of the way.
March 1, 2021
A nice tale, but quite dense and full for me in places. I enjoyed reading about details of life at different times though, it was very insightful for this.
February 15, 2024
One of the best books I've read in a while.
October 21, 2018
Excellent novel that brings to light the suffering of the of the people of Ceylon under British imperialization that leads to Civil War as the Empire dissolves and becomes Sri Lanka. Pair it with Anil's ghost by writer Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient), a former Sri Lankan now living in Canada.
July 28, 2023
I was sure I'd enjoy this, despite knowing that a back cover filled with critical rhapsodies is deeply meaningless. What did I get? A mildly interesting family saga of 20th-century Sri Lanka that begins strewing info dumps early on.
"People have already forgotten Kannangara," my father went on, "but that was a great thing he did: free education. A revolution."
" 'Education for the mass, not for the class,' that's what he said," quoted Uncle Gnanam. "And remember the opposition he had?"
"From the English ministers, you mean?" my father asked. "Not that some of our people were much help. D.S., after all, was leader of the State Council and he didn't do much."
Historical novelists: Just have the narrator take a page to fill the readers in on what happened. We won't mind.
The drama intensifies as the story leaves the leftist infighting of the 1920s and '30s and arrives in the 1980s, maybe because Sivandanan was on hand to see the ethnic bloodshed he describes, but certainly because of the tragedy of what was then beginning in earnest. Still, I was mostly unmoved: When nonfiction conveys the horror of the civil war as thoroughly as "This Divided Island" by Samanth Subramanian or John Gimlette's "Elephant Complex," there's no extra insight to be gained, or emotions to be stirred, by replacing real people with invented ones.
"People have already forgotten Kannangara," my father went on, "but that was a great thing he did: free education. A revolution."
" 'Education for the mass, not for the class,' that's what he said," quoted Uncle Gnanam. "And remember the opposition he had?"
"From the English ministers, you mean?" my father asked. "Not that some of our people were much help. D.S., after all, was leader of the State Council and he didn't do much."
Historical novelists: Just have the narrator take a page to fill the readers in on what happened. We won't mind.
The drama intensifies as the story leaves the leftist infighting of the 1920s and '30s and arrives in the 1980s, maybe because Sivandanan was on hand to see the ethnic bloodshed he describes, but certainly because of the tragedy of what was then beginning in earnest. Still, I was mostly unmoved: When nonfiction conveys the horror of the civil war as thoroughly as "This Divided Island" by Samanth Subramanian or John Gimlette's "Elephant Complex," there's no extra insight to be gained, or emotions to be stirred, by replacing real people with invented ones.
January 11, 2010
The customary introduction to this novel follows: an interesting bit of historical fiction. The more elusive content is hard to define explicitly, from the error of prejudice, the divisive polarization effect brought about through missionary and colonial subjugation, the problem of power and greed, and the constant conundrums of the subaltern. This novel even seemed to touch upon the paradoxes of communalism and socialism, and does not neglect to remind the reader of the dark side of nationalism (that is for sure). The narrative of this novel compliments critical epistemology on the place of memory, reminding the reader that hegemony of globalization and imperialism is not limited to the abstract (that is also for sure).
When I read, I thought it was published in 2007, yet it was much earlier than that (by about a decade it seems), making it all the more prescient, in my view. I also like to remember one's own weaknesses. Enough blather for now....
When I read, I thought it was published in 2007, yet it was much earlier than that (by about a decade it seems), making it all the more prescient, in my view. I also like to remember one's own weaknesses. Enough blather for now....
October 1, 2008
The best book yet on the situation in Sri Lanka, going back to the 1020s, up to almost the present. Good information on the rise of the union movement....situation of estate tamils, and village life in the north and central parts of the country. And a story of 3 generations and their contribution to the country....through these tumultuous times. A moving book, full of information but more importantly, how these events affected individuals who really sought the best for the country and its people.
July 5, 2012
The book is brilliant. With the barbarous war happening down South of the Indian subcontinent, a negligent issue seen, can be termed as one of the beautifully portrayed stories aligning with reality.
Being very abrupt at times makes you think why the author has penned down like that but later on, you realize that the content is so immense that it had to be done.
A story of a three-generational cult that is actively into national politics but end up as mere mortals against it. And true as per the author, "When memory dies, a people die".
Worth a pick!
Being very abrupt at times makes you think why the author has penned down like that but later on, you realize that the content is so immense that it had to be done.
A story of a three-generational cult that is actively into national politics but end up as mere mortals against it. And true as per the author, "When memory dies, a people die".
Worth a pick!
July 22, 2023
I really tried and couldn’t get into this. Maybe worth another shot in future.
October 23, 2008
Long, well-written novel covering three generations of men, set in Sri Lanka from about 1900 to the 1980's. I know little about the place and this novel, though focused on labor struggles, provided a good starting point to introduce Sri Lankan history, geography, daily life, and the current struggle between the two ethnic groups, the Tamils and the Sinhalese. A sad, resigned book that often approaches hope. It is well worth reading.
October 5, 2012
I wish I had read this before my visit to Sri Lanka. It is a gripping book with a well-crafted plot and gives a valuable insight into the reasons for the troubles that plagued this wonderful country and its peoples.
May 29, 2007
This book covers three generations in Sri Lanka. How the story of this family's experience captivates the history of the land from colonialism through civil war is amazing.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews