English version $34.95

Version française disponible

At school, being right isn’t always the right answer.

Peter is a misfit, an awkward 12-year-old who’s mercilessly bullied in school and quietly ignored at home. Peter’s lonely life in small-town New Zealand is upended by the arrival of Charlie, a badass girl who might just be the friend Peter has been needing… But when Peter’s bull-headed commitment to the truth brings him into conflict with Gus, a troubled and violent classmate, things quickly spiral out of control and the two boys find themselves in a terrifying situation neither of them could have ever imagined.

Drawn in a charming and disarmingly cartoony style and full of pitch-perfect dialogue, Tsunami is a devastating and hilarious coming-of-age story, a nuanced examination of adolescent alienation and the unpredictable consequences of our actions.

Awards and mentions

Winner of the New Zealand Society of Authors Best First Book Award

Reviews

Tsunami captures the riotous highs and lows of youth with humour and poignancy. Wenlock renders his regional, personal, novelistic story in a sophisticated and distinct style that harnesses the elements of the form into a wholly unique language of his own. Bravo!

— Sammy Harkham, author of Blood of the Virgin
Reading Tsunami is deliciously unsettling. Ned Wenlock’s irresistible characters slip deeper into trouble, the tension grows, emotions build, until… Well, you’ll have to read it to find out. Tsunami is smart, funny, honest, merciless, and real.

— Dylan Horrocks, author of Hicksville
Wenlock gets it. There is a very particular feeling in this book that displays the heart of a person having to grow up and involve themselves in situations of the people around them. It’s a feeling that most of us have experienced but it fades and gets forgotten. Get that feeling back, even for a brief moment.

— Charles Forsman, author of TEOTFW
Melancholic nostalgia battles for tonal prominence with an undertow of something much more unsettling. At the centre of it all is a protagonist destined for the alienated adolescent hall of fame… Tsunami is a book whose modest fame deserves to spread far beyond New Zealand.

— Ian McGillis, Montreal Review of Books
Throughout the book, glimpses of hope battle with foreboding, forming a compelling mystery as to how it all will end. Tsunami is a thoughtful, affecting graphic novel about a teenager in crisis.

— Peter Dabbene, Foreword Reviews