Bondi Literary Salon October Book Club: The Covenant of Water

Join the Bondi Literary Salon Book Club, hosted by Lucy Pearson! In our gathering, we will be discussing the new novel from bestselling author Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water.

WHEN: Tuesday, 24th October, 2023, at Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore, this event will be hosted in-store, please arrive at 6:45 pm for a prompt 7 pm start.

TICKETS: Admission; $25.00 (excluding external fees). Your ticket includes a drink on arrival and nibbles on the evening.

From the bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial new epic of love, faith and medicine, set in Kerala, South India.

About The Covenant of Water

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water follows a family in southern India 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, 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 poignant beginning, the young girl and future matriarch - known as Big Ammachi - will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life, full of the joys and trials of love and the struggles of hardship.

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. Imbued with humour, deep emotion and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

About the Author

Abraham Verghese is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the author of books including My Own Country and The Tennis Partner. His most recent book, Cutting for Stone, spent 107 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and sold more than 1.5 million copies in the U.S. alone. It was translated into more than twenty languages and is being adapted for film by Anonymous Content. 

Verghese was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2016, has received five honorary degrees, and lives and practices medicine in Stanford, California where he is the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

About the Host

Lucy Pearson has been an avid and ardent reader for as long as she can remember. After graduating with a degree in double English, she went on to read the BBC’s Top 100 - a feat which introduced her to some of her all time favourite books. 

She started her blog, The Literary Edit in 2012, for which she won the London Book Fair’s inaugural Book Blogger of the Year award. In 2019 she co-founded The Bondi Literary Salon with G&A.

Her favourite book is A Little Life and her favourite authors include Daphne Du Maurier, James Baldwin, John Steinbeck and Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche,

About Bondi Literary Salon

Bondi Literary Salon was established in 2018, it is the in-house book club of beloved Bondi institution, Gertrude & Alice. The Bondi Literary Salon endeavors to explore the vast world of literature each month, with a selection that reflects a focus on diverse writers and stories; delving into both classic and contemporary fiction, as well as non-fiction. 

Our philosophy has always been to use language and literature not only as a tool for connection and community, but as an insight to worlds we have not had the pleasure of visiting ourselves. We welcome all - young and old, those with a life-long love of literature, or whose relationship may be only beginning. Join us in the unmatched comfort of an after-hours bookstore, accompanied by wine and cheese, for an evening spent discussing books and building community.

About Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore

Rated as one of the top 10 bookstores in the world by National Geographic, Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore is an oasis for writers, readers, and coffee lovers. Books overflow from the shelves of their store, featuring a mix of new, second-hand, antiquarian and rare books. Stay a while & enjoy some home made chai, and amazing coffee, and unearth a book treasure or two. Read more about the bookstore's story here, and about the real Gertrude & Alice here.