![]() ![]() Sonali began writing her memoir Wave in 2010, where she described about her personal experiences aftermath the tsunami and how she coped up with it. Her 2013 memoir, Wave, recounts her experiences in the tsunami and the progression of her grief in the ensuing years. Post the tsunami, Deraniyagala relocated to New York where she became a visiting research scholar at Columbia University. She is on the faculty of the Department of Economics at SOAS, University of London and is a research scholar at Columbia University in New York City. She studied economics at Cambridge University and has a doctorate from the University of Oxford. She started dating the actress Fiona Shaw in 2018 after years of dating men only the couple got married after Sonali proposed to her a few months later. She was convinced by her therapist who suggested her to write down her painful memories to make her relax from the trauma. Moving to New York, she chose a small apartment in Greenwich Village. She went to New York at the end of 2006 to begin a new life after the trauma of the tsunami. She attempted to commit suicide and also began using alcohol in a bid to forget the tragedy. There, she stayed beneath the covers of her cousin’s bed, hoarding sleeping pills for comfort and solace she attempted to stab herself with a butter knife and smashed her head on the sharp corner of the wooden headboard of the bed in reaction to the trauma of the tsunami. Following the tsunami, she was taken to her aunt's house in Colombo. She reportedly suffered unconsciousness and internal bleeding. The tsunami carried her two miles inland and she was able to survive by clinging to a tree branch. While on vacation at Sri Lanka's Yala National Park in December 2004, she lost her husband, their two sons, her parents, her best friend, and her best friend's mother in the Indian Ocean tsunami. In 1990, she married economist Dr Stephen Lissenburgh (1964-2004), who "made large contributions to British public policy research". Other members of the Deraniyagala family include the civil servant and historian Sir Paul Edward Pieris Deraniyagala Samarasinha Sriwardhana, the artist Justin Pieris Deraniyagala, and the zoologist Paulus Edward Pieris Deraniyagala. She was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to lawyer (Justin) Edward Pieris Deraniyagala and Gemini Deraniyagala. She considers Joan Didion and Michael Ondaatje her favourite literary heroes. She currently serves as a lecturer in Economics at the SOAS South Asia Institute. Sonali Deraniyagala (born 1964) is a Sri Lankan memoirist and economist. ![]()
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