Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Weblink
http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/2 …

FACING THE WAVE

Gretel Ehrlich

A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami

A passionate student of Japanese poetry, theater, and art for much of her life, Gretel Ehrlich felt compelled to return to the earthquake-and-tsunami-devastated Tohoku coast to bear witness, listen to survivors, and experience their terror and exhilaration in villages and towns where all shelter and hope seemed lost. In an eloquent narrative that blends strong reportage, poetic observation, and deeply felt reflection, she takes us into the upside-down world of northeastern Japan, where nothing is certain and where the boundaries between living and dying have been erased by water.

The stories of rice farmers, monks, and wanderers; of fishermen who drove their boats up the steep wall of the wave; and of an eighty-four-year-old geisha who survived the tsunami to hand down a song that only she still remembered are both harrowing and inspirational. Facing death, facing life, and coming to terms with impermanence are equally compelling in a landscape of surreal desolation, as the ghostly specter of Fukushima Daiichi, the nuclear power complex, spews radiation into the ocean and air. Facing the Wave is a testament to the buoyancy, spirit, humor, and strong-mindedness of those who must find their way in a suddenly shattered world.

Available products
Book Published 2013-02-01 by Pantheon Books
Book Published 2013-02-01 by Pantheon Books

Comments

A haunting elegy and story of renewal in a world torn apart by disaster following the 2011 disasters in Japan…Erhlich writes beautifully, with a poet’ssensitivity towards not only what to write but also what to observe….This haunting song for the dead should not be missed. Read more...

Ms. Ehrlich’s book adds flesh and soul and spirit to the bare bones of news reporting, filling the void left by the media and reminding us that real people live behind the headlines.

Ehrlich offers always startling work that has deservedly won her a PEN New England’s Henry David Thoreau Prize for excellence in nature writing…expect first-rate observation offered with intimate insight.

Lyrical, meandering dispatches and eyewitness accounts from the devastation of the 2011 tsunami in Japan…Ehrlich renders the enormity of loss in a fashion comprehensible to her American readers…eloquent.

A riveting mosaic of reportage and reflection drawn from her postapocalyptic expeditions along the decimated northeast coast of Japan following the 2011 tsunami.

A poetic, heartbreaking look at the immediate aftermath of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami – and all that followed. …In sum, the book is a masterpiece of narrative reportage that balances Ehrlich’s own reaction with the voices of the victims. Read more...

Gifted, adventurous, and extolled nature writer Ehrlich has abiding connections to Japan, so she returned there soon after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami…Ehrlich’s invaluable chronicle subtly raises questions about coastal disasters, global warming, and nuclear power as the beauty and precision of her prose and her profound and knowledgeable insights into nature’s might and matters spiritual and cultural evoke a deep state of awe and sympathy.