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Cutting for Stone
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Cutting for Stone (2009) (edit title/settings)

by Abraham Verghese (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel—an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home.

Summary edit see section history

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth 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. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him. An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.

Characters edit see section history

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “"You use what? Interruptus? Pull and pray? Good God man! No wonder you have five kids! It's noble of you to try to get off the train at an earlier station, but it's unreliable."”
    Ghosh
  • “" I squeezed my eyes shut to make myself invisible"”
  • “"The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny."”
    Ghosh
  • “"God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by" --her voice broke as she thought of Sister Mary Joseph Praise---"by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace."”
    Matron
  • “"If 'ecstasy' meant the sudden intrusion of the sacred into the ordinary, then it had just happened to me."”
    Marion
  • “According to Shiva, life is in the end about fixing holes. ..................But there is another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides family. Sometimes this wound occurs at the moment of birth, sometimes it happens later. We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.”
  • “"to think that before Pasteur's discovery of microbes, doctors fought duels over the merits of balsam of Peru versus tar oil for wound infection. Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion. Still, each generation of physicians imagined that ignorance was the special provenance of their elders."”
    Ghosh
  • “"...no money, no church, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit."”
    Dr. Ghosh
  • “When they were out of earshot of the patient, Braithwaite asked the entourage of registrars and house officers, "What treatment is offered by ear in an emergency?"......."Words of comfort,sir."”
  • “The eleventh commandment... never operate on a patient on the last day of their life.”
  • “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”
  • “What does it say when a man has fewer clothes than books?”
  • “"The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you"”
    Matron
  • “He invited me into a world that wasn't secret, but it was well hidden. You needed a guide. You had to know what to look for, but also how to look. You had to exert yourself to see this world. But if you did, if you had the kind of curiosity, if you had an innate interest in the welfare of your fellow human beings, and if you went through that door, a strange thing happened: you left your petty troubles on the threshold. It could be addictive.”
    Marion in speaking about his beginning path into medicine guided by Ghosh
  • “The world turns on our every action and our every omission whether we know it or not.”
  • “As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.”
    Hemlatha
  • “He had so many ways of climbing into the tree house in his head, escaping the madness below and pulling the ladder up behind him;”
    Marion referring to Shiva
Show all 17 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

After eight months spent in the obscurity of our mother's womb, my brother, Shiva, and I came into the world in the late afternoon of the twentieth of September in the year of grace 1954.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Prologue

Part One
1. The Typhoid State Revisited
2. The Missing Finger
3. The Gate of Tears
4. The Five-F Rule
5. Last Moments
6. My Abyssinia
7. Fetor Terribilis
8. Missing People
9. Where Duty Lies
10. Dance of Shiva

Part Two
11. Bedside Language and Bedroom Language
12. Land's End
13. Praise in the Arms of Jesus
14. Knowledge of the Redeemer
15. Crookedness of the Serpent
16. Bride for a Year

Part Three
17. "Tizita"
18. Sins of the Father
19. Giving Dogs Their Due
20. Blind Man's Buff
21. Knowing What You Will Hear
22. The School of Suffering
23. The Afterbird and Other Animals
24. Loving the Dying
25. Anger as a Form of Love
26. The Face of Suffering
27. Answering Medicine
28. The Good Doctor
29. Abu Kassem's Slippers
30. Word for Words
31. The Dominion of the Flesh
32. A Time to Sow
33. A Form of Madness
34. A Time to Reap
35. One Fever from Another
36. Prognostic Signs
37. Exodus

Part Four

38. Welcome Wagon
39. The Cure for What Ails Thee
40. Salt and Pepper
41. One Knot at a Time
42. Bloodlines
43. Grand Rounds
44. Begin at the Beginning
45. A Matter of Time
46. Room with a View
47. Missing Letters
48. Five Fingers
49. Queen's Move
50. Slit the Thew
51. The Devil's Choice
52. A Pair of Unpaired Organs
53. She is Coming
54. Homefires
55. The Afterbird

Bibliography
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author

Glossary edit see section history

  • khat: flowering plant native to the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula
  • hubris: arrogance, conceit, haughtiness, hauteur, pride, self-importance, egotism, pomposity, superciliousness, superiority; informal big-headedness, cockiness
  • probationer: a person (as a newly admitted student nurse) whose fitness is being tested during a trial period.
  • jinn: genies or supernatural creatures in Arab folklore and Islamic mythology that occupy a parallel world to that of mankind
  • injera: a yeast-risen flatbread with a unique, slightly spongy texture. Traditionally made out of teff flour, it is a national dish in Ethiopia and Eritrea
  • palpable: able to be touched or felt
  • pottu: a dot of red color applied in the center of the forehead close to the eyebrows
  • jackfruit: the very large edible fruit of this tree, resembling a breadfruit and important as food in the tropics that comes from a fast-growing tropical Asian tree
  • Grundig: the nondescript name for one of the first portable cabinet radios, which is a radio inside a case
  • Tej: Ethiopian beer
  • berbere: Food from Ethiopia with peppery smell (P.5 61)
  • LIVER SEGMENT (lobe): Division of this large organ into sections is important since a person can donate one section- what is left of his liver regrows. The other lobe can be donated, and will also enlarge to fill most of the space in the person who gets the transplant.
  • fulminant hepatitis: Check Wikipedia- this condition, though rare, is serious, and happens when the first encounter with the HepB virus causes a powerful reaction of the liver, essentially destroying the liver within 7 weeks. The person can't make bile or detoxify those agents usually handled by the liver, becomes comatose, and sometimes has hepatorenal syndrome (kidneys also stop clearing Urea and poisons). This can be fatal.
Show all 13 glossary entries

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

  • St Theresa of Avila: To Shiva and Marion growing up and looking at the photo of St Theresa their mother kept by her chair at work, the saint represents the mother they never met. Beyond that, for Marion it represents a strong holy devotion to medicine, healing arts, caring for children (even God's children- many of whom are adults).
  • Surgery and Cutting for Stone: Both twins become surgeons, so it is a powerful force. The iconic surgeon was Thomas Stone. Their adopted father, Ghosh becomes a surgeon out of necessity and the boys are influenced by that too. I have spent many hours as a resident operating in American ORs. The book contains so much of that "culture"- phrases like "better out than in" and one that my chief resident said to me after a careful explanation in private: "The best operation can be the one you DON'T do!" Even how Ghosh dresses once he is made faculty at the new med school in Addis, reflects how surgeons pick bow ties- as you lean over to examine a patient in bed, less chance of contaminating your patient with the end of a standard tie. My other chief resident always said "Bow tie- or No Tie!!" The phrase "cutting for stone" of course plays on the transplant surgeon's name, and also appears in the Hippocratic oath. I am not sure what it means (can someone tell me?)

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in New York Times Bestsellers (Current). (authoritative list)
This is book 76 of 122 in Znanje - Knjiga dostupna svima. (community list)
This book is in Big Fat Books. (community list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Abraham Verghese (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Random House
Country: USA
Publication Date: February 3, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-71436-8
Page Count: 688

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PS3622.E744C87
  • Dewey: 813.6

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

Very detailed descriptions of surgeries. Some sexual content.A graphic description of a sexual mutilation of a young girl.

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
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Books Cited by This Book edit see section history

   
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