Ambalavaner Sivanandan

Ambalavaner Sivanandan (born 20 December 1923, in Colombo) is a Sri Lankan novelist, and director of the Institute of Race Relations, a London-based independent educational charity. His first novel, When Memory Dies, won the 1998 Commonwealth Writers' Prize in the Best First Book category for Europe and South Asia. He left Sri Lanka after the 1958 riots.

The son of Ambalavaner, a worker in the postal system who came from the village of Sandilipay in Jaffna in the north of the island, Sivanandan was educated at St. Joseph's College, Colombo. There he was taught by J. P. de Fonseka, who inspired him with a love of the English language alongside his native Tamil. He later studied at the University of Ceylon, graduating in Economics in 1945. He went on to teach in the Ceylon "Hill Country" and then worked for the Bank of Ceylon, where he became one of the first "native" bank managers.

On coming to the UK, after a spell as a clerk in Vavasseur and Co and unable to obtain work in banking, Sivanandan took a job in Middlesex libraries and retrained as a librarian. He worked variously in public libraries, for the Colonial Office library and in 1964 was appointed chief librarian at the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) in central London. The library on race relations built up by Sivanandan was, in 2006, moved to the University of Warwick Library, where it is known as the Sivanandan Collection.

In 1972, following an internal struggle at IRR (in which Sivanandan was a principal organiser) with staff and members on one side and the Management Board on the other, over the type of research the IRR should undertake and the freedom of expression and criticism staff could enjoy, the majority of Board members were forced to resign and the IRR was reoriented, away from advising government and towards servicing community organisations and victims of racism. Sivanandan was appointed as its new director.

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