One of The New York Times 's 10 Best Books of the Year, a Christian Science Monitor Best Nonfiction Book, a Newsday Top 10 Books pick, a People m agazine Top 10 pick, a Good Reads Best Book of the Year, and a Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book A National Book Critics Circle Award finalist In 2004, at a beach resort on the coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala and her family--parents, husband, sons--were swept away by a tsunami. Only Sonali survived to tell their tale. This is her account of the nearly incomprehensible event and its aftermath.

ldquo;The most powerful and haunting book I have read in years.”
—Michael Ondaatje

“Unforgettable. . . . The most exceptional book about grief I’ve ever read. . . . [Deraniyagala] has fearlessly delivered on memoir’s greatest promise: to tell it like it is, no matter the cost. . . . As unsparing as they come, but also defiantly flooded with light. . . . Extraordinary.”
—Cheryl Strayed, *The New York Times Book Review

• “Unforgettable . . . It is a miracle Deraniyagala lived. The fact that she could write such a memoir, bringing those she loved to life so completely that they breathe on the page, is itself a miracle.”
  —*Vanity Fair

• “Out of unimaginable loss comes an unimaginably powerful book. . . . I urge you to read Wave. You will not be the same person after you’ve finished.”
  —Will Schwalbe

  “Vivid. . . . What emerges from this wizardry most clearly is, of course, Deraniyagala herself—carrying within her present life another gorgeously remembered one.”
  —*San Francisco Chronicle

• “An amazing, beautiful book.”
  —Joan Didion

  “Stories of grief, like stories of love, are of permanent literary interest when done well. . . . Greatness reverberates from [Deraniyagala’s] simple and supple prose.”
  —*The New York Times

• “Turns revealing into art as powerful as a planetary vibration.”
  —*The Plain Dealer
• “Both heartbreaking and astonishingly beautiful.”
  —*New York Post
• “[Deraniyagala’s family] spring from these pages with an exuberance and dimensionality that lifts Wave from memoir into some virtual realm of documentation.”
  —*The Boston Globe
• “[A] quiet memoir of torturous loss. . . . Deraniyagala tours memories of her young family’s history with artistry.”
  —*The New Yorker

• “A haunting chronicle of love and horrifying loss. . . . Memory, sorrow, and undying love.”
  —Abraham Verghese

  “Radiant. . . . The extremity of Deraniyagala’s story seizes the attention, but it’s the beauty of how she expresses it that makes it indelible. . . . [She is] a writer of such extraordinary gifts. . . . Wave is a small, slender book, but it is enormous on the inside.” 
  —*Salon

• “Chillingly real. . . . Wave captures the elusive, shape-shifting nature of grief.”
  —*Newsday
• “Beautiful and ravaging . . . faultless prose.”
  —*Daily Herald

• “Immeasurably potent. . . . Relentless in its explication of grief, this massively courageous, tenaciously unsentimental chronicle of unthinkable loss and incremental recovery explodes—and then expands—our notion of what love really means.”
  —More magazine

  Autorentext

  SONALI DERANIYAGALA teaches in the Department of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is currently a visiting research scholar at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, New York, working on issues of economic development, including post-disaster recovery.

  Klappentext

  One of The New York Times's 10 Best Books of the Year, a Christian Science Monitor Best Nonfiction Book, a Newsday Top 10 Books pick, a People magazine Top 10 pick, a Good Reads Best Book of the Year, and a Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book A National Book Critics Circle Award finalist In 2004, at a beach resort on the coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala and her family-parents, husband, sons-were swept away by a tsunami. Only Sonali survived to tell their tale. This is her account of the nearly incomprehensible event and its aftermath.

  Zusammenfassung
  **NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST •** One woman's searing account of losing her entire family in a tsunami.

  “The most exceptional book about grief I’ve ever read.... As unsparing as they come, but also defiantly flooded with light.... Extraordinary.” —Cheryl Strayed, The New York Times Book Review
  ****
  A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century

  In 2004, at a beach resort on the coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala and her family—parents, husband, sons—were swept away by a tsunami. Only Sonali survived to tell their tale. This is her account of the nearly incomprehensible event and its aftermath.

  Leseprobe
  sri lanka, july–-december 2005
   
  Someone had removed the brass plate with my father’s name on it from the gray front wall. It had his name etched in black italics. I sat in the passenger seat of my friend Mary--Anne’s car, my eyes clinging to the holes in the wall where that brass plate was once nailed.
   
  This had been my parents’ home in Colombo for some thirty--five years, and my childhood home. For my sons it was their home in Sri Lanka. They were giddy with excitement when we visited every summer and Christmas. Vik took his first steps here, and Malli, when younger, called the house “Sri Lanka.” And in our last year, 2004, when Steve and I had sabbaticals from our jobs and the four of us spent nine months in Colombo until September, this house was the hub of our children’s lives.
   
  This was where we were to return to on the afternoon of the twenty--sixth of December. My mother had already given Saroja, our cook, the menu for dinner. This was where they didn’t come back to. Now, six months after the wave, I dared to set eyes on this house.
   
  I was wary as I sat in Mary--Anne’s car, which was parked by our front wall. I didn’t want to look around. I was afraid of seeing too much. But I couldn’t help myself, I peeked.
   
  Apart for the now nameless wall, the outside of the house had not changed. The tall iron gates still had spikes on top to keep burglars out. The rail on the balcony was white and safe. The mango tree I was parked under was the same mango tree that gave me an allergic reaction when it flowered, that sickly tree, dark blotches on its leaves. I noticed some small black stones on the driveway, and I remembered. Vik would juggle with these stones when he waited out here for the New Lanka Caterers van to come by selling kimbula paan—-sugarcoated bread rolls shaped as crocodiles.
   
  It was a humid, sticky afternoon, and Mary--Anne rolled down the car windows. From its perch on a nearby telephone post, a bulbul trilled. And I recalled the pair of red--vented bulbuls that nested in the lamp that hung in the car porch, just over the front wall. In the hollow of the glass lampshade, there would be a nest built with dried twigs and leaves and even a green drinking straw. The boys were spellbound by the arrival of fidgety chicks, still part covered in pale red shell. They watched the first flutter from that lamp many times, shooing off the mob of crows that rallied on the wall waiting for an unready chick to drop to the ground. Now I could see the two of them, placing a chair under the lamp to stand on and get a better look. Shoving each other off that c…