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OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SUBJECT OF A SIX-PART SUPER SOUL PODCAST SERIES HOSTED BY OPRAH WINFREY
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.
Review
OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK
Winner of the Golden Poppy Award for Fiction
Longlisted for the New American Voices Award
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
Named One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of the Year
Named the #7 Best Book of the Year by Amazon
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
Named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, TIME, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Kirkus Reviews, BookPage, Library Journal, Apple, Minnesota Public Radio, Washington Independent Review of Books, and Chicago Public Library
Named a Most Anticipated Book by the Washington Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Oprah Daily, Publishers Weekly (Top 10), Literary Hub, and BookPage
“One of the best books I’ve read in my entire life. It’s epic. It’s transportive . . . It was unputdownable!”—Oprah Winfrey
“Grand, spectacular, sweeping and utterly absorbing . . . It is a better world for having a book in it that chronicles so many tragedies in a tone that never deviates from hope.”—Andrew Solomon, New York Times Book Review (cover review)
"What a joy…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)
About the Author
Abraham Verghese is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the author 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.