Cutting for Stone

A Novel

By: Abraham Verghese

Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra

Length: 23 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of The Covenant of Water: A beautifully written, page-turning family saga of Ethiopia and America, doctors and patients, exile and home. • “Filled with mystical scenes and deeply felt characters.... Verghese is something of a magician as a novelist.” —USA Today

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.

This sweeping, emotionally riveting novel that "shows how history and landscape and accidents of birth conspire to create the story of a single life" (Los Angeles Times).

©2009 Abraham Verghese (P)2009 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Abraham Verghese is a doctor, an accomplished memoirist and, as he proves in Cutting for Stone, something of a magician as a novelist. This sprawling, 50-year epic begins with a touch of alchemy: the birth of conjoined twins to an Indian nun in an Ethiopian hospital in 1954. The likely father, a British surgeon, flees upon the mother’s death, and the (now separated) baby boys are adopted by a loving Indian couple who run the hospital. Filled with mystical scenes and deeply felt characters–and opening a fascinating window onto the Third World–Cutting for Stone is an underdog and a winner. Shades of Slumdog Millionaire.”–Jocelyn McClurg, USA Today

“A novel set in Africa bears a heavy burden. The author must bring the continent home to help the reader sit in a chair and imagine vast, ancient, sorrowful, beautiful Africa. In the last decade I’ve read books narrated by characters homesick for Africa; books by or about child soldiers; books about politics; books full of splintering history.... Lush and exotic . . . richly written.”–Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

“Any doubts you might harbor about a 534-page first novel by a physician in his 50s will be allayed in the first few pages of this marvelous book. Abraham Verghese has written two graceful memoirs, but Cutting for Stone, his wildly imaginative fictional debut, is looser, bigger, even better.... The doctor in him sees the luminous beauty of the physician’s calling; the artist recognizes that there remain wounds no surgeon can men. ‘Where silk and steel fail, story must succeed,’ Marion muses. This one does.”–Jennifer Reese, Entertainment Weekly; Grade: A

Loved it!

This was a great listen! There is so much wisdom that I plan to buy the physical book so that I can underline/highlight and savor it more. Highly recommend others to read it. I am deeply moved and forever changed by it!

Just a wonderful read you shouldn't miss it

This book is so well researched and everything about it is worth all 5 stars

Impeccable!

What a marvelous book! Impeccable narration, excellent character development, intriguing story. Hated to get to the end, and I miss the characters already.

Loved it

Beautiful story and the performance was excellent. The sacrifice and devotion that many doctors and nurses make around the world should never go unnoticed.

Well worth the listen

A beautifully written book, Mr Verghese has a gift of drawing you into the era, environment and his wonderfully complex characters. The story was interesting and poignantly sad at times, I loved it and was sad to finish, I hope there are more like this! The narrator was great to, Highly recommended.

I hesitated to start this…

I’m so glad I listened. What a brilliant story! So lovingly told. I’m thinking about listening again.

Beautiful story!

Beautiful story and incredibly well written.
Loved it and highly recommended!
Would listen to it again.

Top 5

This book is beautifully written and the narrator is so good that you’ll feel like your watching the story in real life.
I’ve had Audible for 8 years now w/ over 350 books and I’ve only left a small handful of reviews, this one was worthy.

Liked

Engrossing, intense and with an interesting historical setting, I liked the book. The protagonist’s inability to love in a mature way was a deep character flaw that disappointed me. He blamed the girl he had loved as a young man for how his life went wrong.

Superb Writing

At the very top of all the books I have ever read. Style, story, and characters are rendered so exquisitely that I marvel at such an achievement. Tha narrator was exceptional, articulate and unfettered to the story, even dare I say, enhancing it.