The King's English Bookshop

Cutting for Stone moves us from a mission hospital in Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City. As we turn page after frantic page in pursuit of the once-conjoined twins, now doctors, who are the protagonists, get to know their parents, adopted and actual, a childhood friend whose place in the tale is central, not to mention Addis Ababa, we sink into this big lush novel and never want to surface. Steeped in both medicine and history, Verghese's latest book not only entertains but also marks new territory, re-framing the world in the process. Imagine a novel that combines the story-telling skill and the social and cultural acuity of Vikram Seth and Rohinton Mistry with the urgent imagination of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and you have some idea of the magnitude of the genius of Cutting for Stone--it will surely go down as one of the major books of our time.