A comprehensive discussion of all the literary precedents of Water Music would develop into a discussion of the entire history of classical and modern literature. Boyle alludes frequently to other authors and their works. Some of these allusions are gratuitous while others are more substantial. For example, early in the novel, when some Arabs contemplate blinding Mungo Park, he is compared to Gloucester (from Shakespeare's King Lear, c.16051606), Oedipus, and Milton. A decrepit horse on Park's journey is compared to Rocinante, Don Quixote's hack. Fatima, a large Arabic woman, is described as "a movable feast," a reference to the title of Ernest Hemingway's memoir.

Ailie Anderson's patience in waiting for Park recalls Penelope's patience in waiting for Ulysses. Ned Rise's childhood is compared to that of Dickens's characters, and his education is compared to that of Eliza Doolittle from George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (1916). Many of these...