new york times book review of the covenant of water

The Book Report Network

• Bookreporter
• ReadingGroupGuides
• AuthorsOnTheWeb

Sign up for our newsletters!

Find a Guide

For book groups, what's your book group reading this month, favorite monthly lists & picks, most requested guides of 2023, when no discussion guide available, starting a reading group, running a book group, choosing what to read, tips for book clubs, books about reading groups, coming soon, new in paperback, write to us, frequently asked questions.

• Request a Guide

Advertise with Us

Add your guide, you are here:, the covenant of water.

• About the Book

From the New York Times bestselling author of CUTTING FOR STONE comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, and following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret.

THE COVENANT OF WATER is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller CUTTING FOR STONE, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and 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, and follows three generations of a family 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 12-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her 40-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl --- and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi --- will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph, as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone 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 difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

• Publication Date: May 2, 2023
• Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction
• Hardcover: 736 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press
• ISBN-10: 0802162177
• ISBN-13: 9780802162175

• How to Add a Guide
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Newsletters

Copyright © 2024 The Book Report, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Doctor-novelist Abraham Verghese unpacks his long-awaited new epic

• Copy Link URL Copied!

On the Shelf

The Covenant of Water

By Abraham Verghese Grove: 736 pages, $32 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org , whose fees support independent bookstores.

There’s a large whiteboard to the side of Abraham Verghese , acclaimed author and, by day, professor at Stanford University School of Medicine . He swivels in his chair to point to it over Zoom. This is where the cast of his new novel, “ The Covenant of Water ,” took shape — where he jotted down notes and drew sketches of characters including Big Ammachi, the book’s matriarch, whom we first meet as a 12-year-old bride in South India; her son, Philipose, who chronicles the lives of local villagers in newspaper columns signed “The Ordinary Man”; his wife, Elsie, an artist of transcendent gifts; and their daughter, Mariamma, an aspiring physician.

Yet as the novel grew in scope — it spans seven decades, from 1900 to the 1970s, and more than 700 pages — Verghese found himself constantly reworking things. “It’s not as though I’m without a plan — I have a plan,” he insists. “But what happens is over time the characters pretty much dictate that the plan I had just wasn’t going to work for them. So I’d take a photograph of the whiteboard, erase it, and start again.”

One imagines that Verghese’s long-awaited followup to his 2009 bestseller, “ Cutting for Stone ,” involved a lot of scribbling and scrubbing: It’s an immense, immersive work, brimming with interconnected story lines that meander and converge like great river tributaries.

How a Stanford med student used her experiences to write a heist caper and score a Netflix deal

Grace Li’s debut novel, “Portrait of a Thief,” blends action with a thoughtful exploration of colonialism and Chinese identity.

April 5, 2022

It is the story of three generations of one family in the Christian community of Parambil, along the Malabar Coast of South India, a “child’s fantasy world of rivulets and canals” that has “spawned a people — Malayalis — as mobile as the liquid medium around them.” The novel encompasses intense passion and tragedy, as well as a medical mystery: The family suffers from an illness, or curse, which they call the “Condition,” that has caused death by drowning in every generation.

Did Verghese know just how vast an undertaking the book would become? “No, I didn’t,” he says with a shrug. “I think I always had the ambition to write a big book; I enjoy reading big books. There’s nothing else I know that can stop time as effectively as getting lost in a big novel.”

For inspiration, Verghese, 67, drew heavily on his mother’s drawings and stories of growing up in the region. “The Covenant of Water” captures this world as it moves, haltingly, through the 20th century — exploring themes of political upheaval, progress and privilege, death and disease along the way. Her tales, he says, were “so rich that I thought, if I’m looking for a landscape, a geography — and I always felt that geography is like a character in any book — then here was one that I knew well.”

He has known many landscapes. His parents, members of the St. Thomas Christian community of Kerala , were hired by Emperor Haile Selassie to teach in Ethiopia, where Verghese was raised. Most summers, he would return to his grandparents’ village in India. His memories, he says, “are still tinged with the lamplight of that era” before electricity.

He began his medical training in Ethiopia, but civil war intervened and Verghese came to the U.S. to work as a nurse’s assistant. He eventually finished his coursework in Madras (where Mariamma studies in the novel). Both experiences, he says, instilled in him an appreciation of “the bedside and the body as opposed to the technological emphasis we’ve slipped into now.”

A hot new Indian gangster novel thrills and dazzles. It could have done so much more

Deepti Kapoor’s “Age of Vice” comes bearing “Godfather” comparisons and an FX series deal. But in favoring glitz, the novel loses sight of India’s poor.

Jan. 3, 2023

Verghese sees a symbiotic relationship between his twin professions, and he brings a similar sensitivity to each. “I’m an internist and by nature we tend to be very attentive to what the body is saying,” he explains. “I feel like I try to bring those qualities to writing. … I resist the notion that it’s two different things. In my mind, I see myself as just this one being, all physician, and I think the lens I bring to the world, whether in the hospital or writing something, is the same lens.”

Though he is an infectious disease specialist by training, Verghese says he spent the COVID pandemic for the most part removed from the front lines of emergency rooms. Yet he watched in horror as other parts of the country were under siege, including his former home of El Paso (the setting of his 1998 memoir, “The Tennis Partner”).

The period also brought back painful memories of the 1980s AIDS crisis, the subject of Verghese’s first book, “ My Own Country : A Doctor’s Story.”

“It was a very intense experience,” he says of the last few years. “Firstly, in the sense that I felt I had already lived through the defining illness of my career — and then something came along that completely eclipsed it. So it was really kind of stunning, with many, many echoes of the AIDS epidemic for me personally.”

Working on “The Covenant of Water” as COVID raged also opened up stark and poignant parallels. “Here I was writing about illness and death in the 1900s, and it just felt to me that nothing had changed in terms of the things we turn to for sustenance in times of great challenge,” he says. “What matters are things like family and loved ones, people who are willing to make sense of your life for you even as it’s slipping away.”

Verghese believes the literature of the pandemic has yet to be written — but it will. “Very much like HIV, I think one has to wait a little bit to digest what happened,” he says. “I’m sure we’ve already seen many, many narratives, but I think we’ll see more quality ones as time goes on.”

Perhaps Verghese will help write that story himself, returning to the mix of reportage and memoir of his earlier books. But for now, he has embraced the broader, freer canvas of make-believe.

The Ultimate L.A. Bookshelf

Your ultimate L.A. Bookhelf is here — a guide to the 110 essential L.A. books, plus essays, supporting quotes and a ranked list of the best of the best.

April 13, 2023

“The great liberation of fiction is that you can do anything you want, but I think you have to work 20 times harder to get the reader’s attention and keep it,” he says. “It’s a different kind of enterprise altogether, but I enjoy it much more than I think I do nonfiction.”

There’s a saying in the novel that Philipose repeats like a mantra: “Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives.” It’s a sentiment that resonates with Verghese, who feels an affinity for Philipose’s workmanlike approach. “I identify with Philipose in a way,” Verghese admits. “There is true genius in the world and there are people, I suppose like me, who just slog at it and in the end you have a product.”

“The Covenant of Water,” of course, is much more than that: It’s an essential, even healing feat of imagination, a whole world to get lost in. May Verghese continue to slog away, wiping clean his whiteboard over and over again.

Tepper has written for the New York Times, Vanity Fair and Air Mail, among other places, and is curator of international literature at City of Asylum in Pittsburgh.

Verghese will discuss “The Covenant of Water” with Aimee Liu at the William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica for a Live Talks Los Angeles event at 8 p.m. May 3 .

More to Read

How a disillusioned Nigerian man’s trek to Europe becomes a test of faith and ambition

June 29, 2024

Akwaeke Emezi’s novel ‘Little Rot’ is a thrilling but difficult descent into darkness

June 17, 2024

How rap and writing help heal a family’s old wounds

May 17, 2024

Sign up for our Book Club newsletter

Get the latest news, events and more from the Los Angeles Times Book Club, and help us get L.A. reading and talking.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

The week’s bestselling books, Aug. 18

Aug. 14, 2024

In Moon Unit Zappa’s memoir, ‘Earth to Moon,’ famous names collide with family trauma

Aug. 13, 2024

Moon Unit Zappa on the ‘emotional trauma’ of her childhood: ‘Is genius worth the collateral damage?’

‘Ghostwriting, in every sense’: Rebecca Godfrey died writing a novel. Her friend finished it

• Member Login
• Library Patron Login
• Get a Free Issue of our Ezine! Claim

Reviews of The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio

The Covenant of Water

• BookBrowse Review:
• Critics' Consensus:
• Readers' Rating:
• First Published:
• May 2, 2023, 736 pages

• Historical Fiction
• 20th Century (multiple decades)
• Generational Sagas
• Dealing with Loss
• Asian Authors
• Top 20 Best Books of 2023
• Publication Information
• Write a Review
• Buy This Book

About This Book

• Reading Guide

Book Summary

Winner: BookBrowse Fiction Award 2023 From the New York Times–bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, and following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone , which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and 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, and follows three generations of a family 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 from Kerala's long-existing Christian community, 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 unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants. A shimmering evocation of a bygone 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 difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

Excerpt The Covenant of Water

1900, Travancore, South India She is twelve years old, and she will be married in the morning. Mother and daughter lie on the mat, their wet cheeks glued together. "The saddest day of a girl's life is the day of her wedding," her mother says. "After that, God willing, it gets better." Soon she hears her mother's sniffles change to steady breathing, then to the softest of snores, which in the girl's mind seem to impose order on the scattered sounds of the night, from the wooden walls exhaling the day's heat to the scuffing sound of the dog in the sandy courtyard outside. A brainfever bird calls out: Kezhekketha? Kezhekketha? Which way is east? Which way is east? She imagines the bird looking down at the clearing where the rectangular thatched roof squats over their house. It sees the lagoon in front and the creek and the paddy field behind. The bird's cry can go on for hours, depriving them of sleep ... but just then it is cut off abruptly, as though a ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• The Covenant of Water begins in South India at the turn of the twentieth century on the eve of an arranged marriage. Initially, the young bride and her much older husband are nameless, while those around them are named. What effect does this create in your introduction to the main characters and how they evolve over time? When the bride is bequeathed the name "Big Ammachi" (p. 64) by her stepson, how does she grow into her title?
• Big Ammachi finds out about "the Condition" that runs through her new family by means of dramatic tragedy, even though her husband and JoJo's aversion to water was evident early on. What impact do the circumstances of "the Condition" have on the decisions each generation makes for their future?
• In what ways ...
• "Beyond the Book" articles
• Free books to read and review (US only)
• Find books by time period, setting & theme
• Read-alike suggestions by book and author
• Book club discussions
• and much more!
• Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
• More about membership!

BookBrowse Awards 2023

Media Reviews

Reader reviews, bookbrowse review.

Winner: 2023 BookBrowse Fiction Award Verghese sustains this massive story with numerous enigmatic and vividly drawn characters like Big Ammachi, Digby, a Swedish physician named Rune who runs a colony for lepers, Philipose and his love Elsie, who is born to be an artist of staggering genius if only the world will let her. However, running like a riptide beneath the waters of the Malabar Coast, the Condition strikes the family in new, unbidden and heartbreaking ways. It will reach a crescendo with Mariamma, Big Ammachi's granddaughter, who becomes a neurosurgeon to unlock the secrets of this affliction, only to face the secrets "that can bind them together or bring them to their knees when revealed.".. continued

Full Review (802 words) This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today .

(Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski ).

Write your own review!

Beyond the Book

Saint thomas christians.

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Read-Alikes

• Genres & Themes

If you liked The Covenant of Water, try these:

Flight of the Wild Swan

by Melissa Pritchard

Published 2024

About this book

A majestic novel of Florence Nightingale, whose courage, self-confidence, and resilience transformed nursing and the role of women in medicine

The Mountains Sing

by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

Published 2021

More by this author

Winner of the 2020 BookBrowse Debut Award The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multi-generational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. "Both vast in scope and intimate in its telling ... Moving and riveting." - Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer , winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Books with similar themes

Become a Member

BookBrowse Book Club

Members Recommend

The Fertile Earth by Ruthvika Rao

A love story set against India's political turmoil, where two young people defy social barriers.

Everything We Never Knew by Julianne Hough

A dazzling, heartwarming novel from Emmy winner Julianne Hough and Rule author Ellen Goodlett.

Solve this clue:

It's R C A D

and be entered to win..

Who Said...

If every country had to write a book about elephants...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Free Weekly Newsletters

Discover what's happening in the world of books: reviews, previews, interviews, giveaways, and more plus when you subscribe, we'll send you a free issue of our member's only ezine..

Spam Free : Your email is never shared with anyone; opt out any time.

Review: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

If you’re reading this review because you loved Cutting for Stone by Verghese, that’s exactly why I picked out The Covenant of Water on NetGalley and was SO stoked when the publisher granted me access. It was definitely an epic story similar to Cutting for Stone , but was it as good? Read on to find out what I thought!

The Summary

From the New York Times–bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial new epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala and following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of Cutting for Stone . Published in 2009, Cutting for Stone became a literary phenomenon, selling over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remaining 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, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by 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. All of Verghese’s great gifts are on display in this new work: there are astonishing scenes of medical ingenuity, fantastic moments of humor, a surprising and deeply moving story, and characters imbued with the essence of life.

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. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

As I sit here watching my blinking curser, I’m wondering where to start with this book. Man, it was a lot. Good a lot, mostly!

The first thing I noticed was the time investment I’d need to put into it. I didn’t look at how long it was before requesting it on NetGalley, but when I finished the first chapter and my Kindle was telling me it would take 18 more hours to read the whole thing, I just about had a fit 😆. Not only is it over 700 pages, but I also wouldn’t really call it a book that reads quickly. There’s a lot going on that you don’t want to miss, plus quite a few unfamiliar words and names to stumble a little over.

Anyway, once I got over the fact that it was going to take me forever to read, I settled in and was really enjoying it. I really had no idea about the history of South India’s Malabar Coast, so it really was fascinating. It begins with the marriage of a child to a grown man, but she (Big Ammachi) lives with him for several years until anything is consummated. Everything about this was fascinating to read, especially the customs and rules and the overall lay of the land.

Man, Verghese can set a scene. The tropical forests came alive for me, which made it all into a pretty epic movie in my head the whole time. The characters were also like real people to me, like I was there.

There’s a lot of tragedy in this book, but also a lot of beauty, and that juxtaposition makes this book really, truly beautiful. I will say, though, that the tragedy almost got to be too much for me. If I’m going to stick through such a long book, it can’t be all drudgery. Just when things were getting too bleak, though, the story would switch or something would happen to draw me in again.

Speaking of story switching, this book is in chunks. You read one character’s bit, then you move on to another, and another, and then return to the first. While I did enjoy the way all the stories worked together, it was hard to get invested in one story just to be ripped away to one of the other characters’ story lines.

If you read other reviews of The Covenant of Water , you’ll probably find some that are critical of just how much history and politics Verghese jam packs into this book. And, well, they’re right – there’s a lot. For the most part, though, it added to the story. It’s really epic, really involved, and just like a whole historical novel that delivers on the historical bit in a pretty big way.

Then there’s yet another layer: the medical stuff. Just like Cutting for Stone , this novel really holds a lot of truly interesting medical history. I will completely agree with the summary when it says the book 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. ” I especially love the mysticism in the beginning of this “condition” that’s passed down from generation to generation and they have no idea what it is, then suddenly in the 70s, the science is there to try to figure it out.

Overall, I loved The Covenant of Water . However, I did knock one star off because it was SO long, SO history and detail packed, and…well, epic. It really is an amazing work of art and an engrossing read, and I do recommend it to anyone who loved Cutting for Stone or likes these kinds of epic literary novels. Just do what I did and listen to a few audiobooks in between some of the cutaways to the other characters to give yourself some time to take it all in.

Bookshop.org | Amazon | Goodreads

Related Posts

Review: the sky is everywhere by jandy nelson, review: the favor by adele griffin, review: the fallen fruit by shawntelle madison, review: when women were dragons by kelly barnhill, review: playing for freedom by zarifa adiba, review: translation state by anne leckie, review: bodies to die for by lori brand, review: the waves take you home by maría..., book review: summer heat by defne suman, leave a comment cancel reply.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

 Yes, add me to your mailing list

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

What's Better Than Books?

Book Reviews, Author Interviews, Guest Posts, Ratings, and More!

#BookReview The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese @PGCBooks @groveatlantic #TheCovenantofWater #AbrahamVerghese #PGCBooks

From the New York Times –bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial new epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala and following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret.

The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of Cutting for Stone . Published in 2009, Cutting for Stone became a literary phenomenon, selling over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remaining 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, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by 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. All of Verghese’s great gifts are on display in this new work: there are astonishing scenes of medical ingenuity, fantastic moments of humor, a surprising and deeply moving story, and characters imbued with the essence of life.

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. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

Sensuous, poignant, and elaborately plotted!

The Covenant of Water is a powerful, riveting, emotionally-charged multi-generational story that sweeps you away to Southern India  between 1900 and 1977 and into the lives of the Parambil family, especially the women, and all the secrets, smiles, tears, misery, curses, grief, compassion, strength, powerful emotions, and unimaginable tragedy that has tied them together through the years.

The prose is lyrical and expressive. The characters are multi-layered, tormented, resilient, and vulnerable. And the plot is a heart-tugging, incredibly immersive tale of life, love, loss, grief, family, friendship, ambitions, courage, desperation, self-preservation, motherhood, infectious diseases, medical interventions, and devastating genetic afflictions.

Overall,   The  Covenant of Water  is the perfect blend of historical facts and compelling fiction. It’s a hefty book at just over 700 pages, but it’s a book that needs to be read and a book that needs to be savoured, and just like Verghese’s previous novel Cutting for Stone , it is so beautifully written, unique, impactful and memorable that I am sure to be recommending it for many years to come.

This book is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

Thank you to PGC Books for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

About Abraham Verghese

Abraham Verghese is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of books including the NBCC Award finalist My Own Country and the New York Times Notable Book 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 is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He 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. A decade in the making, The Covenant of Water is his first book since Cutting for Stone.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

Share this:

• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

March 2024 Book Review | 'The Covenant of Water'

Dr. Abraham Verghese’s much-anticipated second novel, “The Covenant of Water," follows three generations of a family that suffers from a strange affliction or is it a curse?

Dr. Abraham Verghese’s 2009 bestseller “Cutting for Stone” sold over 1.5 million copies in the US alone. It was on the New York Times’ Bestseller list for two straight years. It’s been a 14-year gap, but in May 2023, his long-awaited second novel “The Covenant of Water” was published. It too, went right to the bestseller list.

Dr. Verghese admits it has taken some time for this second book but reminds us he does have a day job. In addition to being an author, Verghese is a physician, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Vice Chair of Education at Stanford University Medical School.

His writing process begins with a general outline of the story mapped out on a white board. He knew he wanted a multi-generational tale with a good, strong mother-figure to carry the story and he created a wonderful one. His characters often make decisions along the way which change the course of the story.

The story begins in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast. In 1900, a 12-year-old girl is sent off to marry a man 30 years her senior and in time becomes the family matriarch known as Big Ammachi. Her presence is felt by every generation as the epic story unfolds. Deep within the dynamics of relationships and life experiences is hidden a family secret.

Oprah was among the first to sing the book’s praises when she selected it as the 101 st pick for her famous book club. She said it was one of the best books she’d ever read. “It’s epic. It’s transportive . . . It was unputdownable!”

Recognizing the 736-page length might be overwhelming for some readers, she allowed an extra month or two before even announcing the next book club pick. Because it’s in her top three books of all time, she’s doing her best to steward the book by negotiating for the rights for a screen version and doing a series of podcasts.

“The Covenant of Water” can be found at local libraries.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Author Interviews

'the covenant of water' is the story of an indian family haunted by a medical mystery.

Kat Lonsdorf

Ari Shapiro

NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with the author Abraham Verghese about his new novel The Covenant of Water in which a family in India is haunted by a medical mystery.

Copyright © 2023 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Find anything you save across the site in your account

Briefly Noted

Winnie and Nelson , by Jonny Steinberg (Knopf) . Eschewing hagiography, this portrait of the Mandelas’ marriage does justice both to the couple’s political heroism and to the betrayals and the secrets that hounded their union. Nelson emerges as the quieter force, with Winnie essential to his consecration. She could be shockingly cruel, “a monument to the revolution’s underbelly” who would settle personal scores by leveraging “the contagion of violence that besets unstable times,” most notoriously through her “football club,” an assembly of brutal bodyguards. Still, she was a world-class messenger, crucial in bringing Black South Africa’s plight to the international stage. The Mandelas, Steinberg writes, were “throwing themselves into the maelstrom of history, and nobody in a maelstrom is in control of their journey.”

Tomorrow Perhaps the Future , by Sarah Watling (Knopf) . This group portrait examines those people—including Jessica Mitford, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Nancy Cunard, Martha Gellhorn, the war photographer Gerda Taro, and the nurse Salaria Kea—whose commitment to anti-Fascism was galvanized by the Spanish Civil War. Watling deploys a wealth of firsthand testimony and archival materials, not in service of a conventional work of history but in an extended consideration of contemporary concerns: What is the line between solidarity and appropriation in joining the struggles of others? How should writers navigate between objectivity and engagement? “The people in this book were imperfect in their commitment,” she writes. Yet they were prepared to “pick a side anyway.”

The Best Books of 2023

Read our reviews of the year’s notable new fiction and nonfiction.

The Covenant of Water , by Abraham Verghese (Grove) . This novel begins in 1900 in southern India, with the arranged marriage of a twelve-year-old girl to a forty-year-old widowed farmer. Big Ammachi, as she comes to be called, has married into a family with a curse: once every generation, a member drowns. Life unspools across seven decades, during which time Big Ammachi’s loved ones suffer maladies that are treated by practitioners of both traditional and Western medicine. The novel is a searching consideration of the extent to which seemingly contrary approaches to healing can coalesce; for a Swedish doctor who has founded a leprosarium, “medicine is his true priesthood, a ministry of healing the body and the soul of his flock.”

The House Is on Fire , by Rachel Beanland (Simon & Schuster) . The Richmond Theatre fire of 1811 was, at the time, the deadliest disaster in U.S. history, killing seventy-two. This historical novel examines the event and its aftermath through four figures: the stagehand who accidentally starts the fire; a well-to-do widow in a box seat; an enslaved young woman, attending with her mistress but confined to the colored gallery; and a blacksmith, also enslaved, who rushes to the scene and rescues patrons jumping from windows. The bad behavior of the powerful becomes a theme: the theatre company attempts to pin blame on a fabricated slave revolt, and men in the audience trample their wives in making their escape.

New Yorker Favorites

As he rose in politics, Robert Moses discovered that decisions about New York City’s future would not be based on democracy .

The Muslim tamale king of the Old West .

Wendy Wasserstein on the baby who arrived too soon .

An Oscar-winning filmmaker takes on the Church of Scientology .

The young stowaways thrown overboard at sea .

Fiction by Jhumpa Lahiri: “ A Temporary Matter .”

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2023

New York Times Bestseller

THE COVENANT OF WATER

by Abraham Verghese ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 2, 2023

By God, he's done it again.

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."

Pub Date: May 2, 2023

ISBN: 9780802162175

Page Count: 736

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION

Share your opinion of this book

More by Abraham Verghese

BOOK REVIEW

by Abraham Verghese

More About This Book

SEEN & HEARD

PERSPECTIVES

THE SUMMER PACT

by Emily Giffin ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 9, 2024

The time-honored post-breakup trip—“Eat, Shop, Party”—has life-changing results you needn’t believe to enjoy.

The suicide of a friend creates a lifelong bond among three college classmates.

The latest from the author of Something Borrowed opens at the University of Virginia, where four freshmen are about to find the connection that will sustain them through the next four years. They are Lainey, an aspiring actor from California; Tyson, a Black man with law in his future; Summer, a star scholar and varsity athlete; and Hannah, whose conservative Southern mother is going to be very disappointed that she’d rather hang with these three than pledge a sorority. Shortly before their graduation, the unthinkable happens: For reasons no one will ever fully understand, Summer takes her own life. This leads to the eponymous pact: The trio of survivors agree never to take “drastic steps” before reaching out. They are in their early 30s when the first reach-out occurs: Hannah has walked in on her fiance screwing the local Instagram influencer in the bed she just bought for their future marital home. Lainey, now a Hollywood actor on her way up, drops everything and jets in from California to extricate Hannah and exact revenge. Tyson shows up, too, though he has to quit his job and ditch his girlfriend to get there. Once that mess is cleaned up, the three leave on a fantasy getaway on which each gets to pick a stop. The rest of the story unfolds mostly on Capri, always a desirable setting in fiction, where our protagonists hit places like “that beach club [from] TikTok,” La Fontelina. (Do Google it.) Though shocking life changes befall each member of the trio during their Italian sojourn, none are much of a surprise to the reader, who will likely notice the exact moment each plot twist became inevitable. Be quiet and drink your Aperol Spritz.

Pub Date: July 9, 2024

ISBN: 9780593600290

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024

GENERAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

More by Emily Giffin

by Emily Giffin

THE PERFECT COUPLE

by Elin Hilderbrand ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 19, 2018

Sink into this book like a hot, scented bath...a delicious, relaxing pleasure. And a clever whodunit at the same time.

A wedding on Nantucket is canceled when the bride finds her maid of honor floating facedown in the Atlantic on the morning of the big day.

One of the supporting characters in Hilderbrand's ( Winter Solstice , 2017, etc.) 21st Nantucket novel is Greer Garrison, the mother of the groom and a well-known novelist. Unfortunately, in addition to all the other hell about to break loose in Greer's life, she's gone off her game. Early in the book, a disappointed reader wonders if "the esteemed mystery writer, who is always named in the same breath as Sue Grafton and Louise Penny, is coasting now, in her middle age." In fact, Greer's latest manuscript is about to be rejected and sent back for a complete rewrite, with a deadline of two weeks. But wanna know who's most definitely not coasting? Elin Hilderbrand. Readers can open her latest with complete confidence that it will deliver everything we expect: terrific clothes and food, smart humor, fun plot, Nantucket atmosphere, connections to the characters of preceding novels, and warmth in relationships evoked so beautifully it gets you right there. Example: a tiny moment between the chief of police and his wife. It's very late in the book, and he still hasn't figured out what the hell happened to poor Merritt Monaco, the Instagram influencer and publicist for the Wildlife Conservation Society. Even though it's dinner time, he has to leave the "cold blue cans of Cisco beer in his fridge” and get back to work. " ‘I hate murder investigations,’ [his wife] says, lifting her face for a kiss. ‘But I love you.’ " You will feel that just as powerfully as you believe that Celeste Otis, the bride-to-be, would rather be anywhere on Earth than on the beautiful isle of Nantucket, marrying the handsome, kind, and utterly smitten Benji Winbury. In fact, she had a fully packed bag with her at the crack of dawn when she found her best friend's body.

Pub Date: June 19, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-316-37526-9

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

More by Elin Hilderbrand

by Elin Hilderbrand

BOOK TO SCREEN

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

• Top Rated Books
• Top Club Picks This Week
• BOOK CLUB INSIDER
• New Releases
• Now in Paperback
• Reese Witherspoon Book Club
• Oprah's Book Club
• Read with Jenna
• Amazon Best Books
• People Picks
• Entertainment Weekly Picks
• Vogue Recommends
• Skimm Reads
• From Page to Screen

Member Login

Forgot your login/password?

BKMT READING GUIDES

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, ...

Introduction

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

“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

The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and 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, and follows three generations of a family 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 from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, 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 unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone 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 difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

Editorial Review

Discussion questions, notes from the author to the bookclub, book club recommendations.

Recommended to book clubs by 3 of 3 members.

Member Reviews

The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese, author and narrator When I finished this book, I was of two minds. One was relief, because after 31 hours of the audio, I could not believe it had ended. The other... (read more)

Now serving over 80,000 book clubs & ready to welcome yours. Join us and get the Top Book Club Picks of 2022 (so far).

Get Top Club Picks Delivered Weekly

• Contact Info
• For Authors & Publishers
• Privacy Notice
• Randy Susan Meyers
• Anna Quindlen
• AUTHORS & PUBLISHERS
• Feature your book on BookMovement!

© 2003 - 2024 BookMovement, LLC. All rights reserved.

Advertisement

Supported by

A Man Goes to See His Daughter’s Play. Turns Out It’s About Him.

In Jo Hamya’s second novel, “The Hypocrite,” a 20-something playwright puts her absent, aging writer dad on blast.

• Share full article

By Joumana Khatib

Joumana Khatib is an editor at the Book Review.

• Apple Books
• Barnes and Noble
• Books-A-Million
• Bookshop.org

When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.

THE HYPOCRITE , by Jo Hamya

Even bad, absent daddies can set aside ego to appreciate the trappings of a classic. In “The Hypocrite,” Jo Hamya’s sharp and agile new novel, an unnamed, aging writer admits the brilliance of a nearly 10-minute sex scene to open his daughter’s latest play. It’s a shame the actor thrusting onstage is a venereal, self-regarding avatar of the writer himself, otherwise he’d tell his daughter how clever she was.

We are in London, in the summer of 2020. The city is cautiously stirring to life after months of lockdown. The play has been warmly received by critics, and its 20-something playwright, Sophia, is unquestionably talented. Also: wounded, blinkered, petulant.

Her father is a middle-aged novelist of moderate renown who is said to “offend people for a living,” and whose views aren’t quite prehistoric but are premodern enough that I’d prefer not to hear his feelings about women breastfeeding in public. At a glance, he resembles Martin Amis during a low moment. He saw Sophia only intermittently during her childhood, hasn’t published a book in years, hasn’t navigated the shifting cultural tides terribly well. Settling into his seat at the theater, he had no idea what he was in for.

Their longest stretch of time together, a Sicilian vacation a decade earlier in which Sophia took dictation for his novel-in-progress, is the play’s subject. Her memory is ferociously loyal, but unsparing: She nails precise details of the dill-scented kitchen where they worked, his cherished purple shirt, the sexual encounters he thought he’d kept secret. Within moments, the humiliation sets in — he is reduced to a version of himself that had sex “like a pig and wrote like a dictator,” as the audience howls with laughter.

Still, there are crumbs of mercy. Thank God Sophia hasn’t cast someone who can replicate the sputtering of his orgasms.

And thankfully, nobody in this appropriately claustrophobic story emerges the clear hero. No one is that doomed L-word, likable. Hamya bats our sympathies between characters: Sophia, the neglected child who craves both her father’s approval and his artistic toppling; her father, who seems baffled by how quickly he’s encountered irrelevance; and Sophia’s mother, who is justifiably fed up after loving two self-engrossed yet profoundly un-self-aware writers.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .