Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese
ALSO BY ABRAHAM VERGHESE
The Tennis Partner
My Own Country
For George and Mariam Verghese
Scribere jussit amor
And because I love this life
I know I shall love death as well.
The child cries out when
From the right breast the mother
Takes it away, in the very next moment
To find in the left one
Its consolation.
—Rabindranath Tagore, from Gitanjali
PROLOGUE
The Coming
AFTER EIGHT MONTHS spent in the obscurity of our mother's womb, my brother, Shiva, and I ca ...