Cutting for Stone
SynopsisPlot
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.
Story
About this book
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born in Addis Ababa to an Indian nun and a British surgeon. Their mother dies in childbirth and their father vanishes, leaving the boys to be raised at a hospital compound in the Ethiopian capital. Both twins develop a deep interest in medicine from an early age, shaped by the clinical world that surrounds them and the absence of the parents they never knew.
The novel follows the brothers through childhood and young adulthood against a backdrop of political upheaval in Ethiopia. Their bond is unusually close, yet differences in temperament gradually pull them apart. Betrayal between them eventually drives Marion across the Atlantic to New York City, where he continues to practice medicine in very different circumstances. The story moves between these two settings, tracing how distance, memory, and unresolved family history press on each brother's choices.
Abraham Verghese, himself a physician, brings detailed medical observation into the narrative. Surgical procedures and hospital life are described with the specificity of someone trained in the field. The Ethiopian setting, from the streets of Addis Ababa to the routines of a mission hospital, grounds the story in a particular place and era rather than treating the country as mere scenery.
