Anja Kampmann's novel is one of those very rare things: a debut of a literary master . . . High as the Waters Rise is our time's answer to the timeless Gilgamesh myth: a friend is lost, and a journey begins, teaching us with such passion about our world, its terrors, its injustices, its moments of piercing tenderness . . . I am deeply grateful to Anja Kampmann for the gift to us that is this novel, and to her translator, Anne Posten, for the crisp and precise version in English." ―Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa