Sonali Deraniyagala (born 1964) is a Sri Lankan memoirist and economist. She serves as a lecturer in Economics at the SOAS South Asia Institute.

Sonali Deraniyagala was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. In 1990, she married economist  Stephen Lissenburgh (1964-2004), who “made large contributions to British public policy research”. 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. The tsunami carried her two miles inland and she was able to survive by clinging to a tree branch. She reportedly suffered unconsciousness and internal bleeding. Following the tsunami, she was taken to her aunt’s house in Colombo. 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. She attempted to commit suicide and also began using alcohol in a bid to forget the tragedy. She went to New York at the end of 2006 to begin a new life after the trauma of the tsunami. Moving to New York, she chose a small apartment in Greenwich Village. She was convinced by her therapist to write down her painful memories to help her relax from the trauma, which turned into the book “Wave”.