The Wave: A Memoir of Life After the Tsunami

On the morning of the 26th December 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband and her two young sons in the tsuanmi that she miraculously survived.

In this brave and searingly frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She struggles through the first months following the tragedy, furiously clenched against a reality that she cannot face and cannot deny. Then, over the ensuing years, 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.

`The most powerful and haunting book I have read in years... Sonali Deraniyagala has brought back to life in this stunning memoir all those she lost, so much so that we will never forget them or their lives' - Michael Ondaatje