The Covenant of Water

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.

An epic melodrama of medicine ― Wall Street Journal

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

An important book for its efforts in documenting times and places most readers would be too young to have witnessed. It is also a tribute to the scientific progress that has made human lives healthier, and the sacrifices made by previous generations. ― Observer

Majestic...life-affirming, compassionate, and gripping from start to finish ― Mail on Sunday

Fourteen years in the making, Abraham Verghese's The Covenant of Water was worth the wait . . . A massive achievement. Rarely can such an intricate story, following a dozen major characters over more than 70 years, be described as flying by, but this one does ― St Louis Post-Dispatch

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

Much will be written about Abraham Verghese's multigenerational South Indian novel in the coming months and years...Ever the skillful surgeon, Verghese threads meaningful connections between macrocosmic and microcosmic details so elegantly that they are often barely noticeable at first ― NPR.org

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

One of the best books I've read in my entire life. It's epic. It's transportive . . . It was unputdownable! -- Oprah Winfrey, OprahDaily.com

Deliciously inventive.... Over the course of three generations, two seemingly disparate, deeply connected narratives unfold in an ode to India, family and medical marvels ― TIME magazine

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. ― Booklist (starred review)