The Covenant of Water

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 humour, 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.