Michele R. Gamburd's December 2014 publication of The Golden Wave: Culture and Politics after Sri Lanka's Tsunami Disaster commemorates the ten-year anniversary of the Indian Ocean tragedy. Gamburd self-consciously provides a “holistic” account of the disaster and its aftermath in Sri Lanka's southwestern littoral by broadly situating the tsunami in terms of the science of the waves; the experiences of death, destruction, and remarkable survival; and the moral discourses and political-economic features of the recovery. The chapters are interspersed with short first-person accounts of that fateful day, which the author suggests are intended to inject an element of “chaos” that reflects the disorder thrown up by the tsunami. Yet, these chapters offer systematic and insightful discussion of the chaos and initial solidarity that upended existing enmities, and of the strained provisioning of aid through which hierarchies were reasserted and conflicts resumed. Significantly, Gamburd also discusses the local economic and political...

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