The Water Knife

In the near future, the Colorado River has dwindled to a trickle. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel Velasquez "cuts" water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, ensuring that its lush arcology developments can bloom in Las Vegas. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, Angel is sent south, hunting for answers that seem to evaporate as the heat index soars and the landscape becomes more and more oppressive. There, he encounters Lucy Monroe, a hardened journalist with her own agenda, and Maria Villarosa, a young Texas migrant, who dreams of escaping north. As bodies begin to pile up, the three find themselves pawns in a game far bigger and more corrupt than they could have imagined, and when water is more valuable than gold, alliances shift like sand, and the only truth in the desert is that someone will have to bleed if anyone hopes to drink.

"Mr. Bacigalupi’s is the most thought-provoking of the recent apocalypses. It’s a very timely read for policy-makers, as well as anyone living in the threatened American West. That’s the thing about sci-fi authors: Some of them really mean it." Tom Shippey, The Wall Street Journal

"Residents in the southwestern United States enduring that water crisis will appreciate the precision with which Bacigalupi imagines our thirsty future....Bacigalupi is a grim, efficient and polished narrator....Our waterless future looks hot—and filled with conflict." Hector Tobar, The Washington Post

"Anyone can write about the future. Paolo Bacigalupi writes about the future that we're making today, if we keep going the way we are. It makes his writing beautiful...and terrifying." John Scalzi, author of Lock In

"These days are coming, and as always fiction explains them better than fact. This is a spectacular thriller, wonderfully imagined and written, and racing through it will make you think—and make you thirsty." Lee Child, author of Personal

"[A] water-wars thriller set in the Southwest only a few decades from now....While Bacigalupi's environmental message could not be more powerful, it's neatly embedded in a nonstop action plot, full of murders and betrayals, that should satisfy thriller readers who didn't even think they cared about these issues." Gary K. Wolfe, The Chicago Tribune

"[A] fresh, genre-bending thriller....Reading Paolo Bacigalupi's richly imagined novel The Water Knife brings to mind the movie Chinatown. Although one is set in the past and the other in a dystopian future, both are neo-noir tales with jaded antiheroes and ruthless kingpins who wield water as lethal weapons to control life—and mete out death....Bacigalupi weaves page-turning action with zeitgeisty themes....His use of water as sacred currency evokes Frank Herbert's Dune. The casual violence and slang may bring to mind A Clockwork Orange. The book's nervous energy recalls William Gibson at his cyberpunk best. Its visual imagery evokes Dust Bowl Okies in the Great Depression and the catastrophic 1928 failure of the St. Francis Dam that killed 600 people and haunted its builder, Mulholland, into the grave....Reading the novel in 93-degree March weather while L.A. newscasts warned of water rationing and extended drought, I felt the hot panting breath of the desert on my nape and I shivered, hoping that Bacigalupi's vision of the future won't be ours." Denise Hamilton, Los Angeles Times

Paolo Bacigalupi is the author of The Windup Girl, as well as the YA novels Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities. A National Book Award Finalist, and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, John W. Campbell Award, and a three-time winner of the Locus Award, he lives in Colorado with his wife and son.