In this episode, we feature the bestselling writer and physician, Abraham Verghese.  This was his second appearance at Portland Arts and Lectures.  He first joined us in 2012 to talk about his first novel, Cutting for Stone, which spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list.  He came back twelve years later to discuss his second novel, also a bestseller, the Covenant of Water – a sprawling, intergenerational family story that spans most of the 20th century and takes place in Karala, India.  

While Verghese was made famous by these two novels, his writing career actually began with two works of nonfiction, both memoirs that center his life as a doctor – My Own Country and The Tennis Partner.    

In this talk Verghese pulls together all the strands of his life; his parents move from India to Ethiopia, his escape as a young person from a brutal regime to America, his training as a doctor in India, and his medical career in America. Verghese talks about how books initially lead him to medicine and how medicine lead him back to writing books.  We come to understand how these two vocations are connected and deepen the other in his life.  It’s a fascinating tour of the unique career of a brilliant artist and scientist.   

Abraham Verghese is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of the NBCC Award finalist My Own Country and the New York Times Notable Book The Tennis Partner. His most recent book, Cutting for Stone, spent 107 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and sold more than two million copies worldwide. It was translated into more than twenty languages and is being adapted for film by Anonymous Content. Verghese was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama, has received six honorary degrees, and is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives and practices medicine in Stanford, California where he is the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor in the Stanford University School of Medicine. A decade in the making, The Covenant of Water is his first book since Cutting for Stone.