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11 Facts About Sonali Deraniyagala

1.

Sonali Deraniyagala was born on 1964 and is a Sri Lankan memoirist and economist.

2.

Sonali Deraniyagala serves as a lecturer in Economics at the SOAS South Asia Institute.

3.

Sonali Deraniyagala was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to lawyer Edward Pieris Deraniyagala and Gemini Deraniyagala.

4.

Sonali Deraniyagala attempted suicide and began using alcohol in a bid to forget the tragedy.

5.

Sonali Deraniyagala went to New York at the end of 2006 to begin a new life after the trauma of the tsunami.

6.

Sonali Deraniyagala was convinced by her therapist to write down her painful memories to help her relax from the trauma.

7.

Sonali Deraniyagala started dating the actress Fiona Shaw in 2018 after years of dating men only; the couple got married after Sonali proposed to Fiona a few months later.

8.

Sonali Deraniyagala considers Joan Didion and Michael Ondaatje her favourite literary heroes.

9.

Sonali Deraniyagala studied economics at Cambridge University and has a doctorate from the University of Oxford.

10.

Sonali Deraniyagala 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.

11.

Sonali Deraniyagala began writing her memoir Wave in 2010, where she describes her personal experiences in the aftermath of the tsunami and how she coped with it.