Cutting for Stone
by Abraham Verghese
Twin brothers, a mission hospital, one surgery.
For you if
you want to understand Ethiopia through the eyes of someone who was born there but doesn't quite belong to it
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Marion and Shiva Stone are born to an Indian nun and a British surgeon in a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Their father disappears. Their mother dies. They grow up inside the hospital as Ethiopia moves through revolution and civil war around them. Verghese — himself Indian-born, Ethiopian-raised, American-practicing — writes from the same hybrid position as his narrator. A visitor dispatch from someone who is also native, the hospital as a place where Ethiopia's history arrives in bodies. The most novelistic dispatch from inside Ethiopian daily life available in English.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- Ethiopia • East Africa
- Voice
- Written by a Ethiopian author
- Themes
- belongingcoming of age
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