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. 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.
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. 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.
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Find The Covenant of Water Abraham Verghese in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
Find The Covenant of Water Abraham Verghese in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
3 books in catalog
Medical narrative literature that bridges technical clinical reality with humanistic empathy has reached global readership through epic fiction and non-fiction centered on the sacred nature of the physical bedside exam, as seen in the wide-reaching epic novel Cutting for Stone. Abraham Verghese, a physician, professor, and author, has built a distinguished body of work exploring how the human element of medicine persists alongside rapid technological advances. As the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor and Vice Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, his writing draws directly from his extensive clinical career, framing the practice of medicine as a passionate quest, a spiritual calling, and a deeply interactive relationship between patient and healer.
Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1955, Abraham Verghese was the second of three sons born to Indian parents from Kerala who were recruited by Emperor Haile Selassie to teach in Ethiopia. He grew up near the capital city and began his initial medical training at the local university. In 1974, his medical education was abruptly halted when Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed during civil unrest and war. Verghese briefly joined his parents, who had relocated to the United States, working as a hospital orderly in an American facility. This hands-on employment on hospital wards provided him with an invaluable perspective on patient care from the bedside level before he resumed his formal medical studies in India, completing his medical education at Madras Medical College.
After graduating from Madras Medical College, Verghese left India for a medical residency in the United States. Like many foreign medical graduates at the time, he found open positions primarily in less popular community hospitals, an experience he later described in his New Yorker article 'The Cowpath to America.' From 1980 to 1983, he served as an internal medicine resident in Johnson City, Tennessee. He then moved to the Northeast for a two-year clinical fellowship at Boston University School of Medicine, based at Boston City Hospital. During his time in Boston, he observed the early, alarming signs of the HIV epidemic. Returning to Johnson City as an assistant professor of medicine, he confronted the emerging rural AIDS epidemic in regional Tennessee, caring for a continuous stream of young terminal patients in an era before effective antiretroviral treatments were available. This profound clinical experience taught him the subtle, crucial distinction between curing a disease and healing a patient through presence and attentive care.
Driven by a desire to give narrative form to these transformative experiences, Verghese took time away from full-time clinical practice in the late 1980s to attend the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1991. Following his graduate studies in Iowa, he became professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in El Paso, Texas, where he lived and taught for eleven years. In 2002, he moved to San Antonio as the founding director of the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio. There, he established the guiding mission 'Imagining the Patient's Experience' to preserve empathy among medical students and instituted small-group bedside rounds to emphasize physical examinations in diagnostic care.
In 2007, Verghese was recruited to Stanford University School of Medicine as a tenured professor and senior associate chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine. He was subsequently appointed the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor and Vice Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine. At Stanford, he spearheaded the establishment of the Stanford 25 initiative, a clinical program designed to teach medical residents and students essential physical exam techniques and diagnostic skills to recognize physical signs of disease. His ongoing contributions to clinical practice and public humanities earned him a Heinz Award in February 2014 from Teresa Heinz and the Heinz Family Foundation, as well as a 2015 National Humanities Medal.
Abraham Verghese's literary perspective is grounded in the belief that medicine is inherently humanistic rather than merely technological. In his written work and public addresses, he frequently notes that modern health systems risk prioritizing electronic data over the physical human being in the hospital bed. In a December 2008 article published in the New England Journal of Medicine titled 'Culture Shock: Patient as Icon, Icon as Patient,' he articulated how physical touch and attentive bedside examinations form a sacred ritual of diagnostic attentiveness and emotional healing. This ethos infuses both his non-fiction clinical memoirs and his expansive fiction.
Across his non-fiction and novels, Verghese explores themes of geographic displacement, international migration, family heritage, addiction, and spiritual calling within clinical work. His essays and articles have been featured in premier national publications, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, Texas Monthly, Forbes.com, and The Wall Street Journal. In addition to his published literature, he co-hosts the Medscape podcast Medicine and the Machine alongside Eric Topol, discussing the evolving balance between advanced medical technology, artificial intelligence, and compassionate bedside care.
3 books in catalog
Medical narrative literature that bridges technical clinical reality with humanistic empathy has reached global readership through epic fiction and non-fiction centered on the sacred nature of the physical bedside exam, as seen in the wide-reaching epic novel Cutting for Stone. Abraham Verghese, a physician, professor, and author, has built a distinguished body of work exploring how the human element of medicine persists alongside rapid technological advances. As the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor and Vice Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, his writing draws directly from his extensive clinical career, framing the practice of medicine as a passionate quest, a spiritual calling, and a deeply interactive relationship between patient and healer.
Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1955, Abraham Verghese was the second of three sons born to Indian parents from Kerala who were recruited by Emperor Haile Selassie to teach in Ethiopia. He grew up near the capital city and began his initial medical training at the local university. In 1974, his medical education was abruptly halted when Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed during civil unrest and war. Verghese briefly joined his parents, who had relocated to the United States, working as a hospital orderly in an American facility. This hands-on employment on hospital wards provided him with an invaluable perspective on patient care from the bedside level before he resumed his formal medical studies in India, completing his medical education at Madras Medical College.
After graduating from Madras Medical College, Verghese left India for a medical residency in the United States. Like many foreign medical graduates at the time, he found open positions primarily in less popular community hospitals, an experience he later described in his New Yorker article 'The Cowpath to America.' From 1980 to 1983, he served as an internal medicine resident in Johnson City, Tennessee. He then moved to the Northeast for a two-year clinical fellowship at Boston University School of Medicine, based at Boston City Hospital. During his time in Boston, he observed the early, alarming signs of the HIV epidemic. Returning to Johnson City as an assistant professor of medicine, he confronted the emerging rural AIDS epidemic in regional Tennessee, caring for a continuous stream of young terminal patients in an era before effective antiretroviral treatments were available. This profound clinical experience taught him the subtle, crucial distinction between curing a disease and healing a patient through presence and attentive care.
Driven by a desire to give narrative form to these transformative experiences, Verghese took time away from full-time clinical practice in the late 1980s to attend the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1991. Following his graduate studies in Iowa, he became professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in El Paso, Texas, where he lived and taught for eleven years. In 2002, he moved to San Antonio as the founding director of the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio. There, he established the guiding mission 'Imagining the Patient's Experience' to preserve empathy among medical students and instituted small-group bedside rounds to emphasize physical examinations in diagnostic care.
In 2007, Verghese was recruited to Stanford University School of Medicine as a tenured professor and senior associate chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine. He was subsequently appointed the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor and Vice Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine. At Stanford, he spearheaded the establishment of the Stanford 25 initiative, a clinical program designed to teach medical residents and students essential physical exam techniques and diagnostic skills to recognize physical signs of disease. His ongoing contributions to clinical practice and public humanities earned him a Heinz Award in February 2014 from Teresa Heinz and the Heinz Family Foundation, as well as a 2015 National Humanities Medal.
Abraham Verghese's literary perspective is grounded in the belief that medicine is inherently humanistic rather than merely technological. In his written work and public addresses, he frequently notes that modern health systems risk prioritizing electronic data over the physical human being in the hospital bed. In a December 2008 article published in the New England Journal of Medicine titled 'Culture Shock: Patient as Icon, Icon as Patient,' he articulated how physical touch and attentive bedside examinations form a sacred ritual of diagnostic attentiveness and emotional healing. This ethos infuses both his non-fiction clinical memoirs and his expansive fiction.
Across his non-fiction and novels, Verghese explores themes of geographic displacement, international migration, family heritage, addiction, and spiritual calling within clinical work. His essays and articles have been featured in premier national publications, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, Texas Monthly, Forbes.com, and The Wall Street Journal. In addition to his published literature, he co-hosts the Medscape podcast Medicine and the Machine alongside Eric Topol, discussing the evolving balance between advanced medical technology, artificial intelligence, and compassionate bedside care.
