Book Recommendations
Cutting for Stone
By Abraham Verghese
Fiction, General | 556 pages
1 recommendation
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance and bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles—and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined.
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Veronica Allan
"Some knowledge of a country’s history is, in my opinion, a prerequisite for a visit. If you plan on visiting Ethiopia then Cutting for Stone should be on your reading list. The author, American physician Abraham Verghese, was born in Ethiopia to medic parents of Indian ancestry, and began his medical training there. Cutting for Stone follows the lives of twin boys, born to a nurse and a doctor in a hospital in Addis Ababa in 1954. Ethiopia is about to enter a time of great upheaval with the eventual overthrow of Haile Selassi in 1974 which brings about the emigration of one of the twins to the US, just as it did to the author himself. Coming of age, medicine and world history are broad themes in this stirring account of an unusual family living through turbulent times. On the New York bestseller list for more than two years, this book will grip you from the outset. Travellers to India will want to read Verghese’s subsequent novel The Covenant of Water, set in Kerala and already reviewed on this forum."
