Abraham Verghese

Bestselling Novelist

Abraham Verghese is both Vice Chair at Stanford University School of Medicine and an international best-selling author. He is best known for the sweeping epic, Cutting for Stone, which captivated the world, spending more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list. The enthralling, cross-cultural family saga explores the intersections of Africa and America, doctors and patients, and exile and home. 

Born in Addis Ababa, Verghese has practiced medicine everywhere from India to Tennessee. As a physician who emphasizes empathy in medicine, he felt the sometimes cold and unimaginative language of science could not capture the experience of patients, families, and doctors. Shifting his focus to creative expressions of these stories, Verghese earned an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in 1991. Since then, he has authored critically acclaimed work exploring themes of family and medicine such as The Tennis Partner and My Own Country, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His long-awaited latest novel, The Covenant of Water, spans 70 years, following three generations of a family from South India’s Malabar Coast that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in their home, water is everywhere.

In 2014, Verghese received the 19th Annual Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, and was awarded the National Humanities Medal, presented by President Barack Obama in 2015. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, Texas Monthly, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Granta, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. At the heart of Verghese’s writing and medical career shines a vibrant warmth, sense of empathy, and awareness of the complexity of human experience.