The Covenant of Water

Named a Most Anticipated Book by the Washington Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Oprah Daily, Publishers Weekly (Top 10), Literary Hub and BookPageSpanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water follows a family in southern India that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning - and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century a twelve-year-old girl, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this poignant beginning, the young girl and future matriarch - known as Big Ammachi - will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life, full of the joys and trials of love and the struggles of hardship.A shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. Imbued with humour, deep emotion and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

What a joy...to experience the exquisite, uniquely literary delight of all the pieces falling into place in a way one really did not see coming...By God, he's done it again., Verghese - who gifts the matriarch his mother's name and even some of her stories - illuminates colonial history, challenges castes and classism, and exposes injustices, all while spectacularly spinning what will undoubtedly be one of the most lauded, awarded, best-selling novels of the year., Verghese outdoes himself with this grand and stunning tribute to 20th-century India, A literary landmark, a monumental treatment of family and country, as sprawling in scope as Edna Ferber's Giant . . . Writing with compassion and insight, Verghese creates distinct characters in Dickensian profusion, and his language is striking... Throughout, there are joy, courage and devotion, as well as tragedy, Intensely moving...The story is told so exquisitely and the characters, whose lives cross and connect as the water crosses and connects the land, are so rich and vibrant, I feel as though I have walked all those years alongside them...It was an absolute privilege to read this novel.

Abraham Verghese is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the author of books including My Own Country and The Tennis Partner. His most recent book, Cutting for Stone, spent 107 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and sold more than 1.5 million copies in the U.S. alone. It was translated into more than twenty languages and is being adapted for film by Anonymous Content. Verghese was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2016, has received five honorary degrees, and lives and practices medicine in Stanford, California where he is the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

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