Amma by Saraid de Silva | Review

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2025

Longlisted for the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction

Singapore, 1951

When Josephina is a girl, her parents lock her in a room with the father of the boy to whom she's betrothed. What happens next will determine the lives of generations to come.

New Zealand, 1984

Josephina and her family leave Sri Lanka for New Zealand. But their new home is not what they expected, and for the children, Sithara and Suri, a sudden and shocking event changes everything.

London, 2018

Arriving on her uncle Suri's doorstep, jetlagged and heartbroken, Annie has no idea what to expect - all she knows is that Suri was cast out of the family before she was born.

Moving between cities and generations, Amma follows three women on very different paths, against a backdrop of shifting cultures. As circumstance and misunderstanding force them apart, it will take the most profound love to knit them back together before it's too late.

'I couldn't put it down - a moving, heartbreaking (and repairing) family drama. The writing is gorgeous, transporting, powerful: this will be one of the big adult novels of the year' The Spinoff

'In Amma, the past is never far away - it binds three generations of remarkable women, each juggling their own desires and secrets with the expectations placed on them by tradition and the volatile environments they find themselves in ... A book as shocking and revelatory as any family secret, Amma will leave you shaken and reminded of the power of love and loyalty' Chris Tse, New Zealand Poet Laureate

'I can't remember the last time a book held me captive the way Amma did... the power of memory, of perspective, pain and love in all its different forms through the eyes of three unforgettable women' Ore Agbaje-Williams