Name: The Covenant of Water
ISBN: 9781804710456

The Covenant of Water

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, three generations of a Christian family in Kerala, South India, suffer a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning. As the novel opens, a twelve-year-old girl is sent by boat to her wedding, where she meets her husband for the first time. She joins a prosperous household and becomes known as Big Ammachi, the matriarch of an extraordinary family that will endure hardship, celebrate triumph, and witness unthinkable changes over the coming decades.

What Hacker News says

velavarDec 2023

This was the year I got my attention under enough control to be able to read voraciously again like I used to in my childhood :)

* I'll always bring up The Three-body problem because I re-read it every year

* Piranesi because of it's fantastical story-telling

* The Covenant of Water - because it's a fantastic medical drama and a sweeping story spanning generations

* Victory City - Salamn Rushdie's latest novel which is surprisingly readable

* The Enchanted Forest/Kaikeyi/Palace of Illusions - because they cover the major Indian epics from the lens of the women characters (think Circe with an Indian background)

* Trust - The same story told from different viewpoints with a setting in the early NY financial world, which makes it extra interesting

I notice that I do tend to favour books with an Indian background because of my nostalgia for it as I live in a foreign land. Maybe I'll branch out more next year!

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gnabgibJul 2026

(2023) Abraham Verghese’s Sweeping New Fable of Family and Medicine (H1)

Or more accurately (title): Book Review: ‘The Covenant of Water,’ by Abraham Verghese

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