Ambalavener Sivanandan, When Memory Dies

Nivedita Majumdar (York College, CUNY)

Ed. by John Thieme, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 10.3.4: Sri Lankan Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Birte Heidemann (Technische Universität Dresden), Pavan Kumar Malreddy (J W Goethe University of Frankfurt), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1997

Places

Sri Lanka (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Ambalavener Sivanandan's first novel is an extraordinary achievement for its inextricable interweaving of political perspicuousness with profound humanism. When Memory Dies (1997), a three generation saga of epic proportions, charts the history of the author's home country, Sri Lanka, for close to a century. The novel challenges a prevailing tendency of viewing conflicts in third-world societies as historically transcendent. It meticulously lays bare the processes of the nation's colonial and postcolonial history from a subaltern perspective. The most remarkable feat of the novel is the way complex sociopolitical phenomena, from the fall out of colonialism to the betrayal of postcolonial politics, are always depicted through …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1100 words

Citation: Majumdar, Nivedita. "When Memory Dies". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 December 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16621, accessed 22 November 2024.]

Save this article