Showing results by author "Abraham Verghese" in All Categories

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.

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.

When Abraham Verghese, a physician whose marriage is unraveling, relocates to El Paso, Texas, he hopes to make a fresh start as a staff member at the county hospital. There he meets David Smith, a medical student recovering from drug addiction, and the two men begin a tennis ritual that allows them to shed their inhibitions and find security in the sport they love and with each other. This friendship between doctor and intern grows increasingly rich and complex, more intimate than two men usually allow.

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated.

Mientras la India celebra su flamante independencia, la abadesa de un convento de carmelitas en Madrás hace realidad uno de sus sueños más audaces: enviar a África dos jóvenes monjas enfermeras con la noble misión de transmitir el amor de Cristo ayudando a mitigar el dolor de los que sufren. Siete años más tarde, en el modesto hospital Missing de Adis Abeba nacen dos varones gemelos, Marion y Shiva Stone. El hecho no tendría nada de particular si no fuera porque su madre es una monja que muere en el parto y su padre un cirujano británico que desaparece sin dejar rastro.

El pacto del agua sigue a una familia que sufre una aflicción peculiar: en cada generación, al menos una persona muere ahogada, y en Kerala el agua está en todas partes. A principios del siglo XX, una niña de doce años es enviada en barco para contraer matrimonio con un hombre de cuarenta al que no conoce. A partir de entonces, la joven y futura matriarca, conocida como Big Ammachi, será testigo de cambios impensables: una historia llena de alegrías, pruebas de amor y lucha ante las adversidades.

"Efter otte måneder i dunkelheden i vores mors skød kom min bror Shiva og jeg til verden sent på eftermiddagen den tyvende september i det herrens år 1954. Vi drog vores første åndedrag i knap to en halv kilometers højde i den tynde luft i Addis Abeba, Etiopiens hovedstad." Tvillingebrødrene Marion og Shiva Stone er frugten af et dramatisk og forbudt kærlighedsforhold mellem en indisk nonne og en britisk kirurg, som begge arbejder på Missing – et hospital drevet af nonner i Addis Abeba.