Nation [With Headphones] Book

The sea has taken everything.

Mau is the only one left after a giant wave sweeps his island village away. But when much is taken, something is returned, and somewhere in the jungle Daphne—a girl from the other side of the globe—is the sole survivor of a ship destroyed by the same wave.

Together the two confront the aftermath of catastrophe. Drawn by the smoke of Mau and Daphne's sheltering fire, other refugees slowly arrive: children without parents, mothers without babies, husbands without wives—all of them hungry and all of them frightened. As Mau and Daphne struggle to keep the small band safe and fed, they defy ancestral spirits, challenge death himself, and uncover a long-hidden secret that literally turns the world upside down. . . .

Internationally revered storyteller Terry Pratchett presents a breathtaking adventure of survival and discovery, and of the courage required to forge new beliefs.

The New York Times - James Hynes

The heart of the book is Pratchett's serious examination of the roots and utility of religion. He's clearly a skeptic, and at times Nation reads like Philip Pullman, but with less anger and more jokes, and a bit more ambiguity…It's a wonderful story, by turns harrowing and triumphant, and Mau and Daphne are complicated and tremendously appealing characters. And since it's a Terry Pratchett novel, there is also a small army of vivid minor characters, including some colorfully venal British mutineers, a hilariously dry civil servant named Mr. Black and, in a cameo appearance from Discworld, Death himself, who appears here as a god called Locaha. It's a book that can be read with great pleasure by young readers—and not a few of their parents, I suspect—as both a high-spirited yarn and a subtle examination of the risks and virtues of faith.