Facing the Wave

A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami

De: Gretel Ehrlich

Narrado por: Sumalee Montano

**Kirkus Best Books of the Year (2013)****Kansas City Star Best Books of the Year (2013)**

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.

©2013 Gretel Ehrlich (P)2013 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"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." (Library Journal)

"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." (Kirkus)

"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." (Donna Seaman, Booklist)