member priceLonglisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025
Longlisted for the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction
Named one of the best NZ books of 2024 by The Spinoff and Newsroom
In the Bookety Book Books Reader’s Choice Top 10
‘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
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 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
Author Biography
Saraid de Silva is a writer from Aotearoa New Zealand.
Her debut novel, Amma, was published in Australia and New Zealand by Moa Press, part of Hachette Aotearoa, and in the UK by Weatherglass Books in 2024. In 2023 she was selected for Art Omi’s international writer’s residency in Columbia County, New York, and in 2025 she will be the New Zealand writer-in-residence at Randell Cottage in Wellington. Amma was long listed for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for fiction, part of the New Zealand book awards, and also for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2025.
Saraid was a contributor to A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand, and her work has been featured in The Spinoff, Fashion Quarterly, Pantograph Punch and Tupuranga Journal.
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