REVIEW & SYNOPSIS

FROM the bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial new epic of love, faith, and medicine. It is set in Kerala and follows three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret.

The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new historical fiction novel by Abraham Verghese. His previous work, Cutting for Stone, published in 2009, became a literary phenomenon, selling over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone. It remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast. It follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person perishes from drowning – and in Kerala, water is everywhere. The family is part of a Christian community that traces itself to the time of the apostles, but times are shifting, and the matriarch of this family known as Big Ammachi – literally “Big Mother” – will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life.

On display in this new work are all the great writing gifts of Verghese: there are astonishing scenes of medical ingenuity, great moments of humour, and the characters are imbued with a sense of life. It is a surprising and deeply moving story.

The Covenant of Water is a shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself. It is also a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding: a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today.