{"id":32024,"date":"2014-07-16T18:39:59","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T22:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=32024"},"modified":"2014-07-16T18:42:38","modified_gmt":"2014-07-16T22:42:38","slug":"sonali-deraniyagala-wins-the-2014-penackerley-prize-for-tsunami-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=32024","title":{"rendered":"Sonali Deraniyagala wins the 2014 PEN\/Ackerley Prize for “Wave” tsunami memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nBy Ben Travis<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Sonali<\/a>

Sonali Deraniyagala-pic courtesy of: BBC<\/p><\/div>\n

Sonali Deraniyagala has won the PEN\/Ackerley Prize 2014 for Wave, her memoir recounting the loss of her parents, her husband and two young sons in the tsunami that devastated Sri Lanka in December 2004.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pleasure of receiving this wonderful prize makes me see that there is a beauty in struggle and a resting place in the eyes of others,\u201d said Deraniyagala, who was awarded the prize last night. \u201cI have found myself a writer, another identity in the ongoing bewildering journey of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Chair of judges Peter Parker said: \u201cTo write any kind of book about the loss of both parents, a husband and two small sons in a natural disaster is a hazardous undertaking, but in Wave Sonali Deraniyagala has produced one that goes far beyond its dreadful starting point. Subtitled “A Memoir of Life After the Tsunami”, it is as much a reclamation and celebration of the lives that were lost as it is an account of the processes of shock, grief and mourning. In a strong and varied shortlist, Wave emerged as the winner of this year\u2019s Prize because it upholds the standards that J R Ackerley himself set: truthful, unsparing, and written with outstanding grace and economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The PEN\/Ackerley prize, first awarded in 1982, is dedicated to recognising memoirs and autobiographies. This year\u2019s other shortlisted titles included Stage Blood by Michael Blakemore, Levels of Life by Julian Barnes, Horace and Me by Harry Eyres, and Ammonites and Leaping Fish by Penelope Lively. The prize is awarded in memory of Joe Randolph Ackerley, literary editor of The Listener magazine, who died in 1967. Funded by Ackerley\u2019s posthumous royalties, the prizewinner receives \u00a33000. Previous recipients include Alan Bennett and Germaine Greer. <\/p>\n

****************************************<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala: review<\/p>\n

By Beth Jones<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

‘It still seems far-fetched, my story, even to me,\u201d writes Sonali Deraniyagala in a memoir which begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004. Having spent Christmas on the idyllic southern coast, the author and her family see waves leaping over the ridge of the beach. Hours later, her Sri Lankan parents, British husband and two small sons are dead, their bodies swallowed by the water.<\/p>\n

There was, she writes, \u201cno moment of separation, not one that I was aware of anyway. It was not like I tried to cling to my children as they were torn from my arms, it was not like they were yanked from me, not like I saw them dead. They simply vanished from my life forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wave charts the tortured years since Deraniyagala was forced to face this impossible truth. At first suicidal in her aunt\u2019s house in Colombo, then shattered by quotidian objects in her family home in London, she describes navigating a world without those she loves. Now living in New York, she remains \u201ccut loose, adrift, hazy about my identity\u201d as she constantly trips up between her new life and old memories. \u201cWho am I now?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n

It is a nightmarish tale of what happened that desperate day and the desolation and rage that followed. At times, Deraniyagala\u2019s honesty shocks. When her friend\u2019s parents are left behind by the jeep racing her family away from water, she doesn\u2019t call out to the driver to wait for them. \u201cHe\u2019s right,\u201d she remembers thinking, \u201cwe have to keep moving.\u201d <\/p>\n

Earlier she has described how, in \u201ca splintered second\u201d, she left her own parents behind: \u201cI didn\u2019t stop for my parents,\u201d she writes. \u201cI didn\u2019t stop to knock on the door of my parents\u2019 room, which was next to ours\u2026 I didn\u2019t shout to warn them.\u201d Later, she reveals a \u201chideous\u201d truth: \u201cthere [is] a pecking order in my grief\u201d. She has pushed her parents to the fringes of her heart, unable to deal with both their loss and that of her animal-loving seven year-old Vikram, her theatrical five year-old Malli, and her intelligent East-End husband Steve.<\/p>\n

For three years, Deraniyagala tries to \u201cindelibly imprint they are dead\u201d on her consciousness, stalked by a fear that should she forget, then remembering would \u201cbe more harrowing than the constant knowing\u201d. At the same time, she struggles to speak her tragedy aloud, hiding her loss from new friends. When first found, she couldn\u2019t tell her rescuers what had happened or ask for help in searching for her sons: \u201cTelling them would make it too real.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wave is Deraniyagala\u2019s attempt, eight years after the tsunami, to tell the story of that day and its aftermath. Uncomfortable and unsettling, it is a reminder of the horror of this mass tragedy as well as a brave, brutal portrait of Deraniyagala\u2019s own individual, inescapable grief and love. <\/p>\n


\nCourtesy:telegraph.co.uk<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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By Ben Travis Sonali Deraniyagala has won the PEN\/Ackerley Prize 2014 for Wave, her memoir recounting the loss of her parents, her husband and two young sons in the tsunami that devastated Sri Lanka in December 2004. \u201cThe pleasure of receiving this wonderful prize makes me see that there is a beauty in struggle and …<\/p>\n

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