One of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and searingly frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She has written an engrossing, unsentimental, beautifully poised account: as she struggles through the first months following the tragedy, furiously clenched against a reality that she cannot face and cannot deny; and then, over the ensuing years, as she emerges reluctantly, slowly allowing her memory to take her back through the rich and joyous life she’s mourning, from her family’s home in London, to the birth of her children, to the year she met her English husband at Cambridge, to her childhood in Colombo; all the while learning the difficult balance between the almost unbearable reminders of her loss and the need to keep her family, somehow, still alive within her.

Wave

Biographies & Memoirs

Deraniyagala, Sonali

Community & Culture

KNOPF

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.

Wave: A Memoir

Vintage

One of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and searingly frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She has written an engrossing, unsentimental, beautifully poised account: as she struggles through the first months following the tragedy, furiously clenched against a reality that she cannot face and cannot deny; and then, over the ensuing years, as she emerges reluctantly, slowly allowing her memory to take her back through the rich and joyous life she’s mourning, from her family’s home in London, to the birth of her children, to the year she met her English husband at Cambridge, to her childhood in Colombo; all the while learning the difficult balance between the almost unbearable reminders of her loss and the need to keep her family, somehow, still alive within her.
 From the Hardcover edition.

Random House Audio |

A brave, intimate, beautifully crafted memoir by a survivor of the tsunami that struck the Sri Lankan coast in 2004 and took her entire family. On December 26, Boxing Day, Sonali Deraniyagala, her English husband, her parents, her two young sons, and a close friend were ending Christmas vacation at the seaside resort of Yala on the south coast of Sri Lanka when a wave suddenly overtook them. She was only to learn later that this was a tsunami that devastated coastlines through Southeast Asia. When the water began to encroach closer to their hotel, they began to run, but in an instant, water engulfed them, Sonali was separated from her family, and all was lost. Sonali Deraniyagala has written an extraordinarily honest, utterly engrossing account of the surreal tragedy of a devastating event that all at once ended her life as she knew it and her journey since in search of understanding and redemption. It is also a remarkable portrait of a young family's life and what came before, with all the small moments and larger dreams that suddenly and irrevocably ended.

Science & Math

Earth Sciences

MCCLELLAND STEWART

The memoir everyone has been talking about and moved by now in paperback. Universally acclaimed around the world and a national bestseller in North America, Wave is an extraordinarily brave, beautifully written memoir of loss by a survivor of the 2004 tsunami. About loss, it becomes a redemptive book about the power of love. For readers of literary non-fiction, Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, Cheryl Strayed's Wild. On December 26, Boxing Day, Sonali Deraniyagala, her English husband, her parents, her two young sons, and a close friend were ending Christmas vacation on the south coast of Sri Lanka when a wave suddenly overtook them. She was only to learn later that this was a tsunami that devastated coastlines through Southeast Asia. When the water began to encroach closer to their hotel, they began to run, but in an instant, water engulfed them, Sonali was separated from her family, and all was lost. In the years following, as part of a lifetime process, and to keep her loved ones alive, she wrote. And the result is a beautifully crafted, extraordinarily honest, and utterly engrossing account of the surreal tragedy of a devastating event that all at once ended her life as she knew it and her journey since in search of understanding and redemption. It is also a remarkable portrait of a young family's life and what came before, with all the small moments and larger dreams that suddenly and irrevocably ended.

Emblem Editions

A poignant memoir of the author's experiences as a survivor of the 2004 tsunami that killed her parents, husband and two young sons recounts her struggles with profound grief and survivor's guilt and her gradual steps toward remembering the joyful times she shared with lost loved ones. (biography & autobiography).

Large Print Press

WAVE: Version française

Literature & Fiction

Literary

KERO

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Deraniyagala, Sonali. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Deraniyagala, Sonali

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Deraniyagala, Sonali. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Wave

Wave: A Memoir

Wave

Wave

Wave

Wave

WAVE: Version française