Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

“I will not cut for stone,” runs the text of the Hippocratic oath, “even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.”

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, 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.  ~review by random house

Interview with Abraham Verghese

Academy Award-winning director Susanne Beir has signed on to direct a film adaptation of Indian American author Abraham Verghese’s “Cutting for Stone,” reports Variety. Scott Teems (“That Evening Sun”) will pen the screenplay to “Cutting for Stone.” The film will be shot in Africa and the United States. ~indiawest

Quotes from Cutting for Stone

• “Life is full of signs. The trick is to know how to read them."
• “Life too is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward.”
• “Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted”
• “We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.”
• “Life for the Italians was what it was, no more and no less, an interlude between meals”
• “Tell us please, what treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?"....I met his gaze and I did not blink. "Words of comfort.”