US writer Dungo wins France's top graphic novel prize

PARIS: The American writer AJ Dungo won one of France's top graphic novel prizes Wednesday for his heart-breaking tale of love, loss and surfing, "In Waves".

Dungo's acclaimed story is on one level a sideways history of surfing's Hawaiian pioneers and how the Malibu wave rider Tom Blake revolutionised board design.

But it was the powerful parallel narrative of Dungo´s own tragic love for his late partner Kristen Tuason, a fellow surf fanatic who died of bone cancer, which moved the judges of the BD Fnac/France Inter prize.

Tuason helped the Florida-born illustrator, who lives in Los Angeles, overcome his fear of the sea before her death aged 25 in 2016.

"In Waves", 27-year-old Dungo´s first book, has been compared to William Finnegan´s meditative Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, "Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life".

Drawn in steely aquatic greeny-blue, critics hailed it as "moving and fascinating" in the way it interweaves the great heroes of surfing with the author´s adoration of his girlfriend.