About the Author

ABRAHAM VERGHESE is Professor and Vice Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The founding director of the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, he is the author of My Own Country, a 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and a Time Best Book of the Year; The Tennis Partner, a New York Times Notable Book; and, most recently, the critically acclaimed novel Cutting for Stone, which was a national bestseller. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, his essays and short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Granta, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. In 2016 Verghese received a National Humanities Medal from President Obama. He lives in Palo Alto, California.

Reviews

ONE OF THE ATLANTIC'S 15 BOOKS YOU WON'T REGRET RE-READING

“A winner. . . . Filled with mystical scenes and deeply felt characters. . . . Verghese is something of a magician as a novelist.”
—USA Today

“A masterpiece. . . . Not a word is wasted in this larger-than-life saga. . . . Verghese expertly weaves the threads of numerous story lines into one cohesive opus. The writing is graceful, the characters compassionate and the story full of nuggets of wisdom.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“Lush and exotic. . . . The kind [of novel] Richard Russo or Cormac McCarthy might write. . . . Shows how history and landscape and accidents of birth conspire to create the story of a single life. . . . Verghese creates this story so lovingly that it is actually possible to live within it for the brief time one spends with this book. You may never leave the chair.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Vivid. . . . Cutting for Stone shines.”
—The Washington Post Book World

“Absorbing, exhilarating. . . . If you’re hungry for an epic . . . open the covers of Cutting for Stone, [then] don’t expect to do much else.”
—The Seattle Times

“Wildly imaginative. . . . Verghese has the rare gift of showing his characters in different lights as the story evolves, from tragedy to comedy to melodrama, with an ending that is part Dickens, part Grey’s Anatomy. The novel works as a family saga, but it is also something more, a lovely ode to the medical profession.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Compelling. . . . Readers will put this novel down at book’s end knowing that it will stick with them for a long time to come.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“The novel is full of compassion and wise vision. . . . I feel I changed forever after reading this book, as if an entire universe had been illuminated for me. It’s an astonishing accomplishment to make such a foreign world familiar to a reader by the book’s end.”
—Sandra Cisneros, San Antonio Express-News

“Tremendous. . . . Vivid and thrilling. . . . I feel lucky to have gotten to read it.”
—Atul Gawande

“The first novel from physician Verghese displays the virtues so evident in his bestselling and much-lauded memoirs. He has a knack for well-structured scenes, a passion for medicine and a gift for communicating that passion.”
—Cleveland Plain-Dealer

“Fantastic. . . . Written with a lyrical flair, told through a compassionate first-person point of view, and rich with medical insight and information, [Cutting for Stone] makes for a memorable read.”
—Houston Chronicle

“Vastly entertaining and enlightening.”
—Tracy Kidder

Lauded for his sensitive memoir (My Own Country) about his time as a doctor in eastern Tennessee at the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the '80s, Verghese turns his formidable talents to fiction, mining his own life and experiences in a magnificent, sweeping novel that moves from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City over decades and generations. Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a devout young nun, leaves the south Indian state of Kerala in 1947 for a missionary post in Yemen. During the arduous sea voyage, she saves the life of an English doctor bound for Ethiopia, Thomas Stone, who becomes a key player in her destiny when they meet up again at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa. Seven years later, Sister Praise dies birthing twin boys: Shiva and Marion, the latter narrating his own and his brother's long, dramatic, biblical story set against the backdrop of political turmoil in Ethiopia, the life of the hospital compound in which they grow up and the love story of their adopted parents, both doctors at Missing. The boys become doctors as well and Verghese's weaving of the practice of medicine into the narrative is fascinating even as the story bobs and weaves with the power and coincidences of the best 19th-century novel. (Feb.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

ONE OF THE ATLANTIC'S 15 BOOKS YOU WON'T REGRET RE-READING

"A winner. . . . Filled with mystical scenes and deeply felt characters. . . . Verghese is something of a magician as a novelist."
-USA Today

"A masterpiece. . . . Not a word is wasted in this larger-than-life saga. . . . Verghese expertly weaves the threads of numerous story lines into one cohesive opus. The writing is graceful, the characters compassionate and the story full of nuggets of wisdom."
-San Francisco Chronicle

"Lush and exotic. . . . The kind [of novel] Richard Russo or Cormac McCarthy might write. . . . Shows how history and landscape and accidents of birth conspire to create the story of a single life. . . . Verghese creates this story so lovingly that it is actually possible to live within it for the brief time one spends with this book. You may never leave the chair."
-Los Angeles Times

"Vivid. . . . Cutting for Stone shines."
-The Washington Post Book World

"Absorbing, exhilarating. . . . If you're hungry for an epic . . . open the covers of Cutting for Stone, [then] don't expect to do much else."
-The Seattle Times

"Wildly imaginative. . . . Verghese has the rare gift of showing his characters in different lights as the story evolves, from tragedy to comedy to melodrama, with an ending that is part Dickens, part Grey's Anatomy. The novel works as a family saga, but it is also something more, a lovely ode to the medical profession."
-Entertainment Weekly

"Compelling. . . . Readers will put this novel down at book's end knowing that it will stick with them for a long time to come."
-St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"The novel is full of compassion and wise vision. . . . I feel I changed forever after reading this book, as if an entire universe had been illuminated for me. It's an astonishing accomplishment to make such a foreign world familiar to a reader by the book's end."
-Sandra Cisneros, San Antonio Express-News

"Tremendous. . . . Vivid and thrilling. . . . I feel lucky to have gotten to read it."
-Atul Gawande

"The first novel from physician Verghese displays the virtues so evident in his bestselling and much-lauded memoirs. He has a knack for well-structured scenes, a passion for medicine and a gift for communicating that passion."
-Cleveland Plain-Dealer

"Fantastic. . . . Written with a lyrical flair, told through a compassionate first-person point of view, and rich with medical insight and information, [Cutting for Stone] makes for a memorable read."
-Houston Chronicle

"Vastly entertaining and enlightening."
-Tracy Kidder