Covenant of Water

It's a long book (715 pages) that tells of the saga of many characters in India from the beginning of the century to the 60's. English (as opposed to most latin languages) is difficult to turn into something beautiful but Verghese somehow achieves this in his writing. The problem is that he takes on too many characters and it's not long before you get a little lost and as a result it becomes difficult to root for one character in particular. He also uses a lot of native language sentences and words which certainly doesn't help. But a nice book nevertheless.
Apparently another book of his is much better: Cutting from Stone and I'm planning to have t look.