The Water Knife
Paolo Bacigalupi imagines an American Southwest a few hard years from now, when the Colorado River has thinned to a contested thread and states wage legal and literal war over every drop. Angel Velasquez, a water knife working for Las Vegas, is sent to Phoenix to investigate rumors of senior water rights that could change the balance. He crosses paths with a Pulitzer-winning journalist and a Texas refugee, both with reasons to want what he is chasing. The novel runs as a hard-boiled thriller, with bodies and double-crosses on every other page, but the worldbuilding is the real event. Phoenix as a slow-motion ruin, gated arcology towers next to dust camps, climate refugees policed at state lines. A bracing, plausible piece of climate fiction that reads like a crime novel and lingers like a warning.
What you might want to know about The Water Knife
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
In a near-future Southwest gone dry, an enforcer for Las Vegas hunts down the rights to a river before Phoenix collapses.
The Water Knife was written by Paolo Bacigalupi, published in 2015 by Alfred A. Knopf.
The Water Knife is 371 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Water Knife takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
The Water Knife is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
