Cutting for Stone: A Novel
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Cutting for Stone: A Novel Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Abraham Verghese (Author), Sunil Malhotra (Narrator), Random House Audio (Publisher)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 19,906 ratings
Goodreads Choice Award nominee
See all formats and editions
International Bestseller

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

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.


From the Hardcover edition.
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  1. Listening Length
    23 hours and 54 minutes
  2. Author
    Abraham Verghese
  3. Narrator
    Sunil Malhotra
  4. Audible release date
    February 3, 2009
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Random House Audio
  7. ASIN
    B001RMWBFC
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
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Product details

Listening Length 23 hours and 54 minutes
Author Abraham Verghese
Narrator Sunil Malhotra
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date February 03, 2009
Publisher Random House Audio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B001RMWBFC
Best Sellers Rank #697 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#6 in Medical Fiction (Audible Books & Originals)
#11 in Medical Fiction (Books)
#27 in Family Saga Fiction

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
19,906 global ratings
Elements of my childhood woven into this wonderful story
5 Stars
Elements of my childhood woven into this wonderful story
I was born in Ethiopia in 1950 to missionaries with the American Mission. Much of this story took place in Addis Ababa. I could see the sights and smell the food. I wept at parts, shook my head in dismay at parts. I thought Haile Selassie was my grandfather when I was a little girl, so I have a hard time with negative views of him. When he came to the states to visit Jack & Jackie, he flew into the Philadelphia airport, then boarded a Train to arrive in DC with all the fanfare appropriate for royalty. My dad took us down onto the tarmack at the airport to greet the Emperor when he got off the plane and into his limo! The protocol officer was annoyed, but my mother was able to have words with the Emperor's Aide.
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Top reviews from the United States

MJ15
5.0 out of 5 stars Dammit! I thought this was a true story!
Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2024
Verified Purchase
I just finished this book last night. It took me 10 months to read. Why?? Because I'm not sure why. After reading the first few intense chapters (no spoilers), I put the book down. Took a break. And realized I had trouble engaging with the characters. Or maybe last summer got in the way. I really can't explain it, but for the next several months, this book sat in my Kindle. I kept thinking about it, wondering what was going to happen next, but other interests got in the way. I read several books in between and 2 weeks ago, finally decided to pick up Cutting for Stone and the story line once again. Surprisingly, it was quite easy to pick up where I left off even after all these months. Suddenly and surprisingly, the characters came to life...in a big way. The story unfolded and was captivating. I had trouble putting the book down.

I woke up early in the morning to read before work. I picked up the book as soon as I was done work, and I read before bed. The writer has a style that is not only beautiful and poetic in it's rhythm, but so descriptive and alluring. I could picture the characters and locations in my mind and I became engrossed. Despite my college education and post-graduate degree, within almost every chapter, I found myself looking up the definitions of many words unfamiliar to me on my Kindle. I love that. I love learning new words as I read books for enjoyment.

Finishing the book at 1am last night, I exhaled a huge sigh and sat in my bed staring into the dark. I wanted more, but the story ended quite perfectly as writers' want them to....with the reader sitting back and thinking to themselves...."What the hell kind of roller coaster ride did I just take??"

I actually thought this was a true story. I know you're laughing, but it doesn't matter. It's ok. Imagine reading a novel so well written that it made me believe that this story actually happened. It was a thrilling experience to enjoy the book in that manner. When I realized I was wrong all along, I admit I was a bit disappointed. But quickly snapped out of it and realized that I wasn't so much disappointed as I was in awe.

Great story. No, outstanding story! Will this ever be made into a movie? If it does, it better be epic. This book is so memorable. I'm so glad I chose to finish reading it, even though it took me 10 months to do so.
7 people found this helpful
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James Barton Phelps
5.0 out of 5 stars Emotional story well told with great characters
Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2010
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This is a long emotional beautifully written novel with characters you can't forget. It's beautifully plotted - well, maybe too well plotted because the ending is almost potboiler gooey - and the action takes place in two hospitals in two countries - Missing (for Mission) in Addis Ababa and Our Lady of Perpetual Help in the ghetto of New York City. It's written by an Indian doctor who was raised in Ethiopia, schooled in Madras, turned internist and academician in the US then turned writer out of the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa and is now a tenured Professor of The Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford'

If I were to sum up my reaction to this book I would just say that it's a novel with good people in it - and that's a relief these days; it's a novel all the more interesting to us because of the colorful back-drop of Ethiopia in the first two thirds of the book; it's a novel with a bit too much surgical detail for me - a lot of OR description - and I still don't know whether the operating surgeon stands on the right or the left of the table. (What do you with a left-handed surgeon?) And it's a novel, which presents us with the problems of a foreign doctor, (particularly one with a dark skin) entering practice in America: Are they entitled to compete on the same level for the same choice residencies at the same choice hospitals as our domestic graduates? Coming from a different culture can they apply what they have learned medically with the same sensitivity and skill as a graduate of, say, the University of Kansas Medical School?

I'll review it by telling you about the characters because in the end it's mostly about people. No big moral or political issues
Sisteer Mary Joseph Praise - a Carmel;ite nun from India posted to Missing Hospital. It's 1954. Working there as assistant to Thomas Stone. Very religious.. Becomes pregnant byh one time incident with Stone. Conceals the pregnancy under her sari and when found delivering identical twins is rushed to operating room and dies in complicated delivery by Stone.

Thomas Stone - a young. brilliant, Indian trained English surgeon who is so overwrought with the death of the woman he loved because of his bumbling delivery of his twins he rushes form the operating room and is not seen again on the pages of this book - or anywhere else for that matter - till thirty years later when he appears in the operating room of Our Lady hospital in New York as his son Marion is assisting another surgeon in a complicated liver repair. He's now the leading liver surgeon in the world and practicing in a Mayflower hospital in Boston.

Thomas Stone, - Young and brilliant English surgeon. Raised in and trained in India. Father of the twins. Becomes so distraught at the botched delivery he vanishes and doesn't come back to the story till thirty years later when he's found to be the leading liver surgeon in the world, practicing in Boston Hospital.

Marion Stone/Shiva Stone. Identical twin conjoined lightly at the top of the head at birth and separated in the delivery room. Some trouble (?) in detaching Shiva's head may have lead to his death thirty years later from an arteriovenous malfunction caused by blood thinner and which flooded his brain and left him brain dead within a mater of hours - in Our Lady Hospital in NYC.

Marion Praise Stone. The other twin and the narrator of this novel from page one to the end at page 651.

Both Marion and Shiva are raised by Ghost and Hema (see below) at the Hospital in Ethiopia. Lovely scenes of Ethiopia. A warm family feeling at the hospital with many retainers and helpers. Both are close in boyhood with Genet (see below) but drift apart over Genet as adolescents. Marion goes to medical school. Shiva goes only part way but is the brighter. Marion becomes a general surgeon and gets an internship at Our Lady in NYC.

Our Lady of Perpetual Help - it's the "Ellis Island" for young doctors from India, Africa. They can't get jobs in the "Mayflower " hospitals. But it's the place to learn because it's in the ghetto and gets the real problem cases twenty-four hours a day. Exhausting. No sleep. But you learn. (Vershage knows because he was one of them,)

Ghosh. One of the loveliest characters in the book. Indian. Internist. Stationed at Missing. As the Sister Mary Joseph Praise tragedy opens the book he is forced to become a surgeon because Thomas Stone has disappeared and the hospital has no one else to turn to. Marries Hema. (See below) Becomes father to the twins for all intents and purposes. A truly loving man and great doctor.

Hema. An Indian trained OB-GYN specialist at Missing who doesn't get into the operating room in time to save the Sister Mary Joseph Praise situation but delivers the twins successfully. Another lovely character andtruly good person. Marries Ghosh. Raises the twins as her own for thirty years as their real mother for all intents and purposes. Otherwise no children of her own.

Genet. Beautiful daughter of Rosina a retainer at Missing. Same age as the twins. The three of them grow up together in Ethiopia at the hospital. All one family. However she's a tragic figure and the deus ex machina of the tragedy which ends this novel.(As a matter of fact she's such a tragic figure that she's grist for an independent novel about her alone.)

To make a very long story really short this is what happens - all told in superb prose:. There is an idyllic period while the three children grow up and go to school together. Marion loves Genet. They go to medical school together but drift apart. Genet is ready for love and allows Shiva to make love to her unbeknownst to Marion. Now it's the old triangle situation except Marion doesn't learn the truth for some time. .Learning that her daughter has been deflowered Rosina forces Genet into female circumcision. Genet flees and becomes one of the Ethiopian rebels. She is one of four who hijack an Ethiopain Airlines plane during the civil war. She's now a refugee and wanted person and all of her friends are suspect and subject to arrest by the secret police. (This is a Communist state.) Of course, one of her friends is or was Marion Stone and they set out to arrest him. He is warned of the pending incarceration and flees; and in one of the great escape chapters gets out of the country and to America to Our lady hospital where the rest of the story takes place - at about page 400. Shiva remains in Ethiopia and is interested in the treatment and prevention of vaginal fistulas in women, so prevalent in a society which has poor obstetrical and genealogical services.

In America Marion completes his internship and his residency and is now, years later, a Board Qualified General Surgeon. He practices at Our Lady still. One day, anxious for Ethiopian food, he's told about the Queen of Sheba restaurant in NYC - best Ethiopian restaurant in America. Goes there. Finds it's run by Tsegue who he has helped in Addis Ababa years before. She reunites with him and tells him Genet is now in NYC. They find each other. Genet has had a rough life. Finally he makes love to her. But he gets Hepatitis B from her and is at death's door..

Now Marion is dying from liver failure but Shiva comes to America and suggests transplanting a portion of his liver into Marion. Should work because of identical twins. But no one has ever done it before. Call in Thomas Stone the greatest liver surgeon in the world and father of his twins. He does it successfully the first ever living donor liver surgery of its kind. Marion recovers. Shiva dies from the brain bleed. In the meantime Genet has died. in prison - dregs etc.

So as the curtain comes down on this drama there are really only three people left alive - Marion, Thomas and Hema who has lost her husband (Ghosh died some years ago) she has lost one of her "children" (Shiva) but she still has Marion. Everyone else we were close to is dead.

But there is more. Remember I told you it was gooey? Now there is peaceful music. Marion goes back to Missing where he remains as the surgeon. Hema is with him. She's interested in Shiva's program for the eradication and/or proper treatment of vaginal fistulas in African women. And now the program is well funded. Thomas Stone is retired with his reputation intact. Our Lady is famous for the first liver operation of it/s kind and all is well at Missing.

Great novel. Great characters. Lots of plot. Long. But worth it. Please read it. You'll like it.
97 people found this helpful
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DSA
4.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written. Exemplary storytelling.
Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2024
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Verghese’s latest release, The Covenant of Water, is on my TBR list, but the library hold list is long so I decided to read this one while I’m waiting my turn. I found this book to be beautifully written, hard to read at times (especially in the beginning), and longer than I expected. I read it on my Kindle and hadn’t realized it was nearly 700 pages! No wonder it took me nearly two months to finish.

Words I’m remembering: “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.”
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Top reviews from other countries

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Francoise Pelletier
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant.
Reviewed in Canada on January 16, 2024
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A great book
Very well written.
Wonderful story.
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ACA
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!
Reviewed in India on November 15, 2023
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Now, I have to read all his other books!!!! I wish though that they're not so expensive!
3 people found this helpful
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Maria Louw
5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful book ( and in great condition)
Reviewed in Germany on October 12, 2023
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wonderful book, so thoughtful and classic in its poetic tackling of medical topics & terms. truly a lovely read. The book arrived in great condition and I am so happy that I bought this from amazon
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MH
5.0 out of 5 stars Magnifique
Reviewed in France on June 25, 2018
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Un des meilleurs livres que j'ai lus. Je l'achète constamment depuis pour l'offrir et mes ami(e) en sont aussi ravis.
One person found this helpful
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Alexiis Harshini
5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoying
Reviewed in Singapore on August 29, 2023
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Currently I am midway through the book and am enjoying it as its quite funny!
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