Cutting for Stone   [CUTTING FOR STONE] [Hardcover] (urspr publ 2009; utgåvan 2009)

When this book originally came out I got the hardback out of the library queue, and didn't make it more than 50 pages in. I found it slow, and knew I would never be able to finish it before it was due.
I have since found the used paperback at my local Rotary Book Sale, and grabbed it. Now, I finally picked it up for the instagram #readtheworld21 challenge for East Africa.

I finished in 10 days. I flew through this book.

This isn't exactly a multigenerational family saga, it is about parents and children, and a small Ethiopian hospital largely funded by a church in Houston. It is about service, medicine, immigration, family (and what that means), and shame--all in the context of mid-20th-century Ethiopian history, culture, and society. There are Indian immigrants to Ethiopia, Ethiopians, and Eritreans. Ethiopian politics and Eritrean separatists come into play.

The author himself was born and raised in Ethiopia to Indian teachers. He had started medical school when the Emperor was desposed, and he came with his family to the US. He then attended medical school in India before returning to the US.

Just like Verghese, one of the characters in this book comes to the US for residency, and discovers that there are different tracks for foreign and American medical school graduates. The American graduates get the top spots and the top hospitals, the foreign graduates get shuffled around in struggling hospitals and may spend years trying to do a 5-year residency due to closures etc. And then, if they do finish, as often as not they will end up in rural out-of-the-way places where Americans won't go, but they themselves are happy to. Verghese has a lot to say about the American hospital system, and I really want to read his memoir to hear more.

Unlike Verghese, his character Marion does return home to Ethiopia, a fully qualified doctor, to work at the same hospital he grew up on the grounds of.

This novel has it all--family, love, hate, war, immigration, created family, school, loyalty, abandonment, and more. It is excellent. ( )

I liked this book for several reasons. It is different then most of the books I read, the story is unusual and complex, the writing is great, the setting is unusual and it is a book that educates while also entertaining. ( )

Excellent audio version. ( )

Loved this book, it might even be one of my all-time favourites. I read more about Abraham Verghese and now want to read his other books. ( )

Im äthiopischen Missionsspital "Missing" werden 1954 unter schwierigsten medizinischen Umständen die beiden Zwillinge Marion und Shiva geboren. Ihre Mutter, eine indische Nonne, stirbt bei der Geburt. Ihr Vater flieht vor der Verantwortung. Glücklicherweise finden sie in den indischstämmigen Ärzten Hema und Gosh liebevolle Ersatzeltern.

Verghese erzählt die Lebensgeschichte dieser Zwillinge aus Sicht des Ich-Erzählers Marion. Es gelingt ihm dabei ein vielschichtiges Familienepos mit großen Gefühlen und fesselnder Handlung eingebettet in die jüngere äthiopische Geschichte zu schaffen. Verghese - selbst in Äthiopien geboren und in den 1970ern vor Mengistus Diktatur geflohen - vermengt dabei autobiographisches mit fiktionalem. Er spannt den Bogen von der glücklichen Kindheit der Zwillinge in Addis Abeba über die politischen Wirren der Kaiserzeit und die sozialistische Dikatur bishin zum Sieg der Rebellen über Mengistu 1991 und beleuchtet daneben auch das Schicksal in der erzwungenen Emigration.

Verghese gelingt es, alltägliche Szenen, bewegende Momente und große Umbrüche einzufangen, ohne dass die Geschichte Marions und Shivas jemals kitschig oder konstruiert erscheint. Hinzu kommt, dass das Buch trotz seiner Länge durchgehend fesselnd ist. Einziger Wermutstropfen dieses Meisterwerks ist, dass Verghese - im Brotberuf Arzt - medizinische Erläuterungen verwendet, sodass manche Passagen an ein Lehrbuch erinnern. Dies tut summa summmarum der Lesefreude jedoch keinen Abbruch. ( )