From the Publisher
Praise for 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 BookPage
“Breathtaking . . . The book beautifully explores the lessons we learn from our ancestors in an always changing world.”—Real Simple
“Both a compassionate family saga and an account of medicine, politics, art, women’s rights, and the legacy of British colonialism in India . . . Vast in scope and also surprisingly intimate, Verghese’s novel covers most of the 20th century in India, but is ultimately the story of a family—blood and chosen—caring for each other through all of life’s challenges and changes.”—Shelf Awareness
“Three generations of a South Indian family are marked by passions and peccadillos, conditions and ambitions, interventions both medical and divine . . . As in the bestselling and equally weighty Cutting for Stone, the fiction debut by Verghese (who’s also a physician), the medical procedures and advances play a central role—scenes of hand surgery and brain surgery are narrated with the same enthusiastic detail as scenes of lovemaking. A few times along this very long journey one may briefly wonder, Is all this really necessary? What a joy to say it is, 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.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“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; even graphic descriptions of medical procedures are beautifully wrought. Throughout, there are joy, courage, and devotion, as well as tragedy; always there is water, the covenant that links all.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“Instantly and utterly absorbing is the so-worth-the-wait new novel by the author of Cutting for Stone . . . 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.”—Terry Hong, Booklist (starred review)
“Breathtaking . . . By the end, Verghese perfectly connects the wandering threads . . . Verghese outdoes himself with this grand and stunning tribute to 20th-century India.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A masterpiece. Put it on your bookcase next to A Passage to India by E.M. Forster or anything by the brave and brilliant Salman Rushdie. Indeed, put it next to any great novel of your choice. Sprawling, passionate, tragic and comedic at turns . . . Verghese, probably the best doctor-writer since Anton Chekhov, upends all of our expectations . . . You won’t want it to end.”—BookPage (starred review)
“Reading The Covenant of Water I felt as if I’d been plunged into an atmosphere thicker than air, or as if I was swimming in a sea of stories, each more intense and unforgettable than the last.”—Sandra Cisneros, author of Woman Without Shame
“From the very first page of Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water, I was overtaken with joy. Truly, I caught my breath, absorbing such beauty. What a sure faith this novel is—what an agreement with language. What a glorious story of land and family. What a brilliant path written across generations.”—Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
“The Covenant of Water is a brilliant novel, one I feel lucky to experience. It is enthralling; its conjured worlds vigorous and astonishing; its characters so real they call me back to their lives. I wanted to read this book for whole days and nights, and do little else.”—Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
“This majestic, sweeping story of family secrets—their curse, their legacy, and their cure—is intimate and profound. Abraham Verghese takes us on a journey across nearly a century and more than one continent, all the while dazzling with his rich, elegant prose. Verghese is a literary legend at the height of his extraordinary powers.”—Dani Shapiro, author of Signal Fires
“A novel of utter beauty, The Covenant of Water is worthy of all praise in its depiction of medical ingenuity and family love; it is epic and eye-opening, the sort of story that only a singular mind like Abraham Verghese’s could have woven.”—Imbolo Mbue, author of How Beautiful We Were
Praise for Cutting for Stone:
“A winner . . . Filled with mystical scenes and deeply felt characters . . . Verghese is something of a magician as a novelist.”—USA Today
“Beautiful . . . Amazing.”—New Yorker
“Verghese creates this story so lovingly that it is actually possible to live within it for the brief time one spends with this book. You may never leave the chair.”—Los Angeles Times
“Tremendous . . . Vivid and thrilling . . . I feel lucky to have gotten to read it.”—Atul Gawande
“Absorbing, exhilarating.”—Seattle Times
“Engrossing . . . Endearing . . . A passionate, vivid, and informative novel.” —Boston Globe
“The novel is full of compassion and wise vision . . . I feel I changed forever after reading this book.”—Sandra Cisneros, San Antonio Express-News
“Stupendous . . . An epic medical romance, surgery meets history. Beautiful and deeply affecting.”—Financial Times
“Vivid . . . Cutting for Stone shines.”—Washington Post Book World
“A masterpiece . . . Verghese expertly weaves the threads of numerous story lines into one cohesive opus.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Vastly entertaining and enlightening.”—Tracy Kidder
“Wildly imaginative . . . A lovely ode to the medical profession.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Compelling . . . Readers will put this novel down at book’s end knowing that it will stick with them for a long time to come.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Fantastic . . . Written with a lyrical flair, told through a compassionate first-person point of view, and rich with medical insight and information.”—Houston Chronicle
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-01-25
Three generations of a South Indian family are marked by passions and peccadillos, conditions and ambitions, interventions both medical and divine.
"Where the sea meets white beach, it thrusts fingers inland to intertwine with the rivers snaking down the green canopied slopes of the Ghats. It is a child’s fantasy world of rivulets and canals, a latticework of lakes and lagoons, a maze of backwaters and bottle-green lotus ponds; a vast circulatory system because, as her father used to say, all water is connected." Verghese's narrative mirrors the landscape it is set in, a maze of connecting storylines and biographies so complex and vast that it's almost a little crazy. But as one of the characters points out, "You can't set out to achieve your goals without a little madness." The madness begins in 1900, when a 12-year-old girl is married off to a widower with a young son. She will be known as Ammachi, "little mother," before she's even a teenager. Her life is the central stream that flows through the epic landscape of this story, in which drowning is only the most common of the disastrous fates Verghese visits on his beloved characters—burning, impaling, leprosy, opium addiction, hearing loss, smallpox, birth defects, political fanaticism, and so much more, though many will also receive outsized gifts in artistic ability, intellect, strength, and prophecy. As in the bestselling and equally weighty Cutting for Stone (2009), the fiction debut by Verghese (who's also a physician), the medical procedures and advances play a central role—scenes of hand surgery and brain surgery are narrated with the same enthusiastic detail as scenes of lovemaking. A few times along this very long journey one may briefly wonder, Is all this really necessary? What a joy to say it is, to experience the exquisite, uniquely literary delight of all the pieces falling into place in a way one really did not see coming. As Ammachi is well aware by the time she is a grandmother in the 1970s, "A good story goes beyond what a forgiving God cares to do: it reconciles families and unburdens them of secrets whose bond is stronger than blood."
By God, he's done it again.
