The Covenant of Water

By: Abraham Verghese

Narrated by: Abraham Verghese

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 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.

©2022 Abraham Verghese (P)2022 Recorded Books

A great story, well told.

Authors shouldn’t narrate their own books unless it’s Abraham Verghese. His stories simply require his voice- and what a story this is.

Give me a sweeping, multi-generational with unfamiliar cultural elements, all day long.

And way he pronounces the word children is so endearing.

A beautiful journey I didn’t think I wanted to take

Author narration? Hardly ever a good omen. But in this case, the Indian lilt to the names, places and cadence of the sentences added such authenticity to the story. Forty+ hours? I love a long book as long as it’s Dickens but this was quite a leap of faith. Lastly, India? I know little of the country and its history. Do I want to? Not sure. But this is so much more than that. Yes, the setting is India but the family dynamics are universal while the author immerses us in this fascinating culture. I am engaged in spite of my misgivings. I feel as if I have watched an artist begin a painting with sketches and notes. As the beauty of his inspiration is revealed, little by little, I feel privileged to witness the creation of a masterpiece of intimate storytelling.

A Beautiful Lie of Immense Truth

This is a genuinely gorgeous piece of art, which simultaneously dissects the psyche like a Freudian surgeon, but with the bedside manner of Mother Theresa. It is a painful procedure, that you will never regret.

An amazing and unforgettable novel

Like his earlier book Cutting For Stone the characters and even the story will always remain with you and you will be the better for it. You will also learn a lot about a unique and beautiful section of India and the little known St. Thomas Christians. One wishes the author would write shorter books so they would appear more often. He is also an extraordinary narrator doing both a Scottish accent and a Southern evangelist perfectly Getting through this book requires stamina- at times I thought there was too much tragedy and that it was drawn out too long- but it is worth persevering to the end.

Wow! Wow! Wow!

There is no greater compliment that I can think of than I didn’t want this book to end. The language, story, and delivery were sublime.