Monday, March 2, 2009

Abraham Verghese

Abraham Verghese is the author of The Tennis Partner, a New York Times Notable Book, and My Own Country, a National Book Critics Circle finalist.

Currently a professor of internal medicine at Stanford University, he has also served on faculties in Iowa, Texas, and Tennessee. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, his fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, and Granta.

His new novel is Cutting for Stone.

Last week I asked him what he was reading. His reply:
I am currently rereading the whole C.S. Forester series of books about the Napoleonic wars. I first read them as a teen and was enthralled. Then and now I knew nothing about the sea, but even on this rereading, I find all the nautical details wonderful, just enough to allow the reader to imagine what all those things are; plus Forester is a master of creating mood and of understatement—again allowing the reader the delight to imagine and fill in the blanks. I have juicy new titles of contemporary authors waiting on my bookshelf, but it is Hornblower that I have to finish first!
Read an excerpt from Cutting for Stone, and learn more about the author and his work at Abraham Verghese's website.

--Marshal Zeringue