'The Covenant of Water' tells the story of three generations in South India

Much will be written about Abraham Verghese's multigenerational South Indian novel in the coming months and years.

As we've seen with Verghese's earlier fiction, there will be frequent references to that other celebrated doctor-writer, Anton Chekhov. There will also be continued invocations of the likes of Charles Dickens and T.S. Eliot to describe Verghese's ambitious literary scope and realism. Indeed, the literary feats in The Covenant of Water deserve to be lauded as much as those of such canonical authors.

We would also do well to consider as part of the Indian novel in English lineage that includes literary greats fits Verghese's too: "There is no village in India, however mean, that has not a rich sthalapurana, or legendary history, of its own." And, like Rao's story, Verghese's also opens with a storytelling grandmother.