The Covenant of Water

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • 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

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.

This discussion guide was shared in partnership with Grove Press.

Book club questions for The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese - Reading Group Guide by Jennifer Baker

The Covenant of Water begins in South India at the turn of the twentieth century on the eve of an arranged marriage. Initially, the young bride and her much older husband are nameless, while those around them are named. What effect does this create in your introduction to the main characters and how they evolve over time? When the bride is bequeathed the name “Big Ammachi” (p. 64) by her stepson, how does she grow into her title?

Big Ammachi finds out about “the Condition” that runs through her new family by means of dramatic tragedy, even though her husband and JoJo’s aversion to water was evident early on. What impact do the circumstances of “the Condition” have on the decisions each generation makes for their future?

In what ways does the novel constitute an “epic”? What other genres do you identify in the novel?

For Digby and Philipose, expectations are passed down to them from their mothers. Digby’s mother tells him, “It’s only you bein’ top o’ the class that gets me through this hell. I dream o’ yer success” (p. 87), while Big Ammachi thinks of her son, “How wonderful if his stubborn determination turned into a quest to cure the Condition!” (p. 229). How are Digby and Philipose continually plagued by alternate paths, even after finding their apparent callings? Do these men come to terms with their decisions?

Professions come to define many of the characters in The Covenant of Water: there are doctors, writers, domestic workers, and other laborers within these pages. How do the attributes of these characters reflect their work, as well as come to define their passions and personalities? Who is allowed to choose a profession freely in the novel, and whose futures are foretold from their birth?

In what ways do diagnoses change the trajectory of the lives of the characters? Do some characters experience a fear of being ostracized, either for themselves or for those they care about? How do characters view those labeled or seen as “afflicted” throughout the novel? Do those labels appear to inhibit characters, or allow them a different kind of freedom from community standards?

Discuss the marriage of Elsie and Philipose. What traits of each character may have contributed to the rifts in their relationship? How did the couple and those around them attempt to mend the marriage?

Consider how geography affects destiny for these characters. From Parambil to Madras to Scotland, Verghese’s characters often find or seek refuge away from their original shores. In what ways is a sense of home and belonging threaded throughout the novel, and how do characters like Big Ammachi, Digby, Elsie, and Mariamma connect to or disconnect from the places where they were born and the homes where they eventually settle?

How does grief manifest for Digby over the years as he witnesses the decline of the women he loves? How does this compare to periods of grief for other characters?

Both Elsie and her daughter Mariamma face discrimination in their professional pursuits. How do these women push back against the misogynistic cultures they face? In what ways had they been assured that they deserved to pursue careers as an artist and a doctor, respectively?

A hospital in the Parambil community is an ever-present need, especially as preventable losses recur throughout the generations. What impediments—financial, social, bureaucratic—prevented the hospital from being constructed? Does the eventual construction of the hospital seem to be part of the destiny of the family at Parambil?

Throughout The Covenant of Water, various characters act as caretakers and demonstrate healing abilities. In what ways does healing intertwine with the practice of medicine for the salvation of characters?

Spanning about eighty years, The Covenant of Water depicts several political and environmental events that impact the characters in different ways. How do the politics of the world around them lead to the diverging philosophies of Mariamma and Lenin Evermore regarding how to help their people and nation at large? Which environmental events do you think had deep repercussions for other members of Mariamma and Lenin’s families over the years?

How does Verghese illustrate the changes and consistency of segregation and the caste system in India over the decades? Did you find parallels between the treatment of lepers by outsiders of St. Bridget’s and the caste divides of the characters in the spaces they reside throughout South India? How are the tensions of caste and class resolved, if at all?

How does the institution of marriage evolve over the course of the decades in the novel? How do the relationships and marriages at the end of the novel compare and contrast to that of Big Ammachi and her husband?

Suggestions for further reading:

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
A Burning by Megha Majumdar
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul

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**Praise for The Covenant of Water:**

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK
An Amazon Top 10 Book of the Month
Named a Most Anticipated Book by the Washington Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Oprah Daily, Publishers Weekly (Top 10), Literary Hub, and BookPage

“In the spirit of his breakout novel, Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese offers an epic melodrama of medicine . . . The miraculous melds naturally with medicine in The Covenant of Water, whether in the form of artistic inspiration or religious awakening . . . Most remarkably, this depth of emotion comes across even in descriptions of surgery, which one would expect to be faceless and technical, if not merely sickening. But not so in the taut depiction of a skin graft for a burn victim or a trepanning procedure to relieve a man’s swollen brain of fluid.”—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

“When you come to the end of Abraham Verghese’s new novel, The Covenant of Water, you will feel that you have lived among the Indian and Anglo-Indian characters who populate its pages for almost a century. It’s that long. But it’s also that immersive—appropriately enough for a book so steeped in the medium and metaphor of water, as the title suggests . . . These lives, so finely drawn and intensely felt, are at once singular and inextricably bound together within the immensity of fate and faith—like ‘the water that connects them all in time and space and always has.’”—Ellen Akins, Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Fourteen years in the making, Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water was worth the wait . . . A massive achievement. Rarely can such an intricate story, following a dozen major characters over more than 70 years, be described as flying by, but this one does . . . [Verghese] goes deeply into the history and culture of southern India while telling a story so engaging and lyrical it never seems academic . . . The Covenant of Water is a rousing good story, full of joy and tragedy and humor and beauty and ugliness—sometimes all at once . . . Verghese is a master at keeping these disparate characters on parallel paths that converge down the line. If you ever think he is wandering astray, be assured that he isn’t. All will come together in the end in a way that may make you gasp in appreciation. Throughout, Verghese woos us with beautiful language.”—Gail Pennington, Saint Louis Post-Dispatch

“A family in Kerala, India, is affected with the Condition: Each generation one person dies by drowning. For more than 70 years Big Ammachi survives tragedy and triumph, growing from a 12-year-old bride into the matriarch as her country also comes into its own.”—Kate Tuttle, People, “Best New Books”

“Ever since Cutting for Stone, we have been eagerly awaiting another book by Abraham Verghese, and what a breathtaking return this is . . . An extraordinary look at what past generations have endured for the sake of the present, Verghese’s tribute to 20th century India is a literary feat you won’t want to miss.”—Brittany Bunzey, Barnes & Noble Reads

“Come to this epic novel by Verghese for the history of Kerala, India; stay for the devoted elephant. The bestselling author (and Stanford doctor) recounts the Parambil family’s ups and downs through a century of change, interlaying some of his medical expertise but never losing his commitment to how love allows people—and sometimes beasts—to choose goodness and care over politics and brutality.”—Los Angeles Times

“Breathtaking . . . The book beautifully explores the lessons we learn from our ancestors in an always changing world.”—Real Simple

“Both a compassionate family saga and an account of medicine, politics, art, women’s rights, and the legacy of British colonialism in India . . . Vast in scope and also surprisingly intimate, Verghese’s novel covers most of the 20th century in India, but is ultimately the story of a family—blood and chosen—caring for each other through all of life’s challenges and changes.”—Shelf Awareness

“Three generations of a South Indian family are marked by passions and peccadillos, conditions and ambitions, interventions both medical and divine . . . As in the bestselling and equally weighty Cutting for Stone, the fiction debut by Verghese (who’s also a physician), the medical procedures and advances play a central role—scenes of hand surgery and brain surgery are narrated with the same enthusiastic detail as scenes of lovemaking. A few times along this very long journey one may briefly wonder, Is all this really necessary? What a joy to say it is, 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)

“A literary landmark, a monumental treatment of family and country, as sprawling in scope as Edna Ferber’s Giant . . . Writing with compassion and insight, Verghese creates distinct characters in Dickensian profusion, and his language is striking; even graphic descriptions of medical procedures are beautifully wrought. Throughout, there are joy, courage, and devotion, as well as tragedy; always there is water, the covenant that links all.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“Instantly and utterly absorbing is the so-worth-the-wait new novel by the author of Cutting for Stone . . . Verghese—who gifts the matriarch his mother’s name and even some of her stories—illuminates colonial history, challenges castes and classism, and exposes injustices, all while spectacularly spinning what will undoubtedly be one of the most lauded, awarded, best-selling novels of the year.”—Terry Hong, Booklist (starred review)

“Breathtaking . . . By the end, Verghese perfectly connects the wandering threads . . . Verghese outdoes himself with this grand and stunning tribute to 20th-century India.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A masterpiece. Put it on your bookcase next to A Passage to India by E.M. Forster or anything by the brave and brilliant Salman Rushdie. Indeed, put it next to any great novel of your choice. Sprawling, passionate, tragic and comedic at turns . . . Verghese, probably the best doctor-writer since Anton Chekhov, upends all of our expectations . . . You won’t want it to end.”—BookPage (starred review)

“Reading The Covenant of Water I felt as if I’d been plunged into an atmosphere thicker than air, or as if I was swimming in a sea of stories, each more intense and unforgettable than the last.”—Sandra Cisneros, author of Woman Without Shame

“From the very first page of Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water, I was overtaken with joy. Truly, I caught my breath, absorbing such beauty. What a sure faith this novel is—what an agreement with language. What a glorious story of land and family. What a brilliant path written across generations.”—Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

“The Covenant of Water is a brilliant novel, one I feel lucky to experience. It is enthralling; its conjured worlds vigorous and astonishing; its characters so real they call me back to their lives. I wanted to read this book for whole days and nights, and do little else.”—Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning

“This majestic, sweeping story of family secrets—their curse, their legacy, and their cure—is intimate and profound. Abraham Verghese takes us on a journey across nearly a century and more than one continent, all the while dazzling with his rich, elegant prose. Verghese is a literary legend at the height of his extraordinary powers.”—Dani Shapiro, author of Signal Fires

“A novel of utter beauty, The Covenant of Water is worthy of all praise in its depiction of medical ingenuity and family love; it is epic and eye-opening, the sort of story that only a singular mind like Abraham Verghese’s could have woven.”—Imbolo Mbue, author of How Beautiful We Were

“Abraham Verghese makes good on the novelist’s covenant with the reader—trust me with your attention and I will reward you with a tale worth inhabiting. With a plot both deliciously languorous and breathtakingly taut, Verghese takes us on a monumental journey over generations and continents, over languages and cultures, across tendons and sinews, and through to human nature at its beating heart. It left me breathless and pining for more.”—Danielle Ofri, author of What Doctors Feel