I edited a line to be more specific. This book should be cited more for tsunami story on Sri Lanka through French eyes. on the other hand, the hard-core grief story was written by Sonali Deraniyagala in English "Waves" memoir about losing her husband and sons to Tsunami.

There was far more awareness of the Tsunami here than this text implies. It stayed all over the news for weeks, although the focus was mainly on Indonesia - Banda Aceh. Most probably because there were a lot of Western tourists involved and many casualties among them - let's be honest. A big earthquake happened in Iran later, with about as many casualties in total, but there were no tourists involved, just locals, so I think the news agencies here did not deem the event notesworthy 🙁😡... There is a French word for "tsunami", which is "raz-de-marée", but after 26/12/2004 we largely use the Japanese word like the rest of the world. Lots of people who are usually wary of giving their money for humanitarian causes did give (small) sums for the Tsunami victims (this one was and still is referred to with a capital letter). I think this has to mean something... Otherwise it's true that people who went through catastrophes usually scarcely speak about them - as you say, in fragments (TBC)