1 rating | 1 review | avg rating:1.00

Abraham’s Year In Books

Abraham’s 2025 Year in Books

Take a look at Abraham’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.

Go to Abraham’s 2025 Year in Books

Abraham Verghese’s Followers (10,531)

Abraham’s Bookshelves

to-read (0)
currently-reading (1)
read (2)

Abraham Verghese

Goodreads Author

Born

in Adis Ababa, Ethiopia

Website

http://www.abrahamverghese.org

Genre

Literature & Fiction

Member Since

November 2009

edit data

Abraham Verghese, MD, MACP, is Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine.

Born of Indian parents who were teachers in Ethiopia, he grew up near Addis Ababa and began his medical training there. When Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed, he completed his training at Madras Medical College and went to the United States for his residency as one of many foreign medical graduates. Like many others, he found only the less popular hospitals and communities open to him, an experience he described in one of his early New Yorker articles, The Cowpath to America.

From Johnson City, Tennessee, where he was a resident from 1980 to 1983, he Abraham Verghese, MD, MACP, is Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine.

Born of Indian parents who were teachers in Ethiopia, he grew up near Addis Ababa and began his medical training there. When Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed, he completed his training at Madras Medical College and went to the United States for his residency as one of many foreign medical graduates. Like many others, he found only the less popular hospitals and communities open to him, an experience he described in one of his early New Yorker articles, The Cowpath to America.

From Johnson City, Tennessee, where he was a resident from 1980 to 1983, he did his fellowship at Boston University School of Medicine, working at Boston City Hospital for two years. It was here that he first saw the early signs of the HIV epidemic and later, when he returned to Johnson City as an assistant professor of medicine, he saw the second epidemic, rural AIDS, and his life took the turn for which he is most well known ? his caring for numerous AIDS patients in an era when little could be done and helping them through their early and painful deaths was often the most a physician could do.

His work with terminal patients and the insights he gained from the deep relationships he formed and the suffering he saw were intensely transformative; they became the basis for his first book, My Own Country : A Doctor's Story, written later during his years in El Paso, Texas. Such was his interest in writing that he decided to take some time away from medicine to study at the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1991. Since then, his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Texas Monthly, Atlantic, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, Forbes.com, and The Wall Street Journal, among others.

Following Iowa, he became professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in El Paso, Texas, where he lived for the next 11 years. In addition to writing his first book, which was one of five chosen as Best Book of the Year by Time magazine and later made into a Mira Nair movie, he also wrote a second best-selling book, The Tennis Partner : A Story of Friendship and Loss, about his friend and tennis partner?s struggle with addiction. This was a New York Times' Notable Book. ...more

Combine Editions
Abraham Verghese’s books

Average rating: 4.38 · 1,542,905 ratings · 128,923 reviews · 24 distinct works • Similar authors

	Cutting for Stone 4.33 avg rating — 425,177 ratings — published 2009 — 114 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Covenant of Water 4.41 avg rating — 306,489 ratings — published 2023 — 56 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Abscond 4.09 avg rating — 29,895 ratings — published 2025 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Tennis Partner 4.03 avg rating — 15,554 ratings — published 1998 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	My Own Country: A Doctor's Story 4.23 avg rating — 13,129 ratings — published 1994 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Abraham Verghese 2 Books Collection Set (The Tennis Partner, Cutting for Stone) 4.65 avg rating — 17 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Short Stories 3.65 avg rating — 20 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese Book 4.60 avg rating — 10 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Tennis Partner by Abraham Verghese (Goodreads Author), Luigi Maria Sponzilli 4.20 avg rating — 5 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	O pacto da água by Abraham Verghese (Goodreads Author), Rodrigo Arijon (Narrator), Odorico Leal - translator 3.50 avg rating — 2 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Abraham Verghese…

It's time once again for our semi-regular roundup of new books in paperback, dedicated to the reader on the go. In this collection, we have 90...

Abraham is Currently Reading

Abraham Verghese is currently reading

Proficient Motorcycling: The Ultimate Guide to Riding Well

by David L. Hough

bookshelves: currently-reading

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Jun 28, 2021 01:16AM

rss
Abraham’s Recent Updates

Abraham Verghese finished reading True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen by Lance Richardson (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Oct 21, 2025 07:46PM · 4 likes · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of True Nature by Lance Richardson. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — True Nature by Lance Richardson <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Abraham Verghese is currently reading True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen by Lance Richardson (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Oct 19, 2025 07:40AM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of True Nature by Lance Richardson. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — True Nature by Lance Richardson <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

More of Abraham's books…

Quotes by Abraham Verghese (?)

“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. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

tags: inspirational

533 likes

“Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

tags: cutting-for-stone-my-abyssinia

423 likes

“You live it forward, but understand it backward.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

292 likes

See all Abraham Verghese's quotes »

Polls

Best Fiction

The Help

1123 votes 17.3%

The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3)

654 votes 10.0%

Her Fearful Symmetry

321 votes 4.9%

Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls #1)

316 votes 4.9%

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1)

309 votes 4.7%

The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam, #2)

292 votes 4.5%

The White Queen (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #2)

273 votes 4.2%

Fool

232 votes 3.6%

The Magicians (The Magicians #1)

228 votes 3.5%

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

226 votes 3.5%

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

224 votes 3.4%

Juliet, Naked

206 votes 3.2%

Cutting for Stone

187 votes 2.9%

The Little Stranger

146 votes 2.2%

South of Broad

144 votes 2.2%

The Story Sisters

141 votes 2.2%

Pygmy

138 votes 2.1%

Let the Great World Spin

134 votes 2.1%

This is Where I Leave You

130 votes 2.0%

Little Bee

126 votes 1.9%

Brooklyn

119 votes 1.8%

Drood

107 votes 1.6%

The Children's Book

104 votes 1.6%

A Reliable Wife

103 votes 1.6%

A Gate at the Stairs

96 votes 1.5%

The Weight of Silence

91 votes 1.4%

That Old Cape Magic

77 votes 1.2%

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

70 votes 1.1%

Await Your Reply

69 votes 1.1%

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County

62 votes 1.0%

The School of Essential Ingredients

61 votes 0.9%

6509 total votes

35 comments

More...

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
Challenge: 50 Books: Lisa's 2009 Reads	106	612	Dec 31, 2009 04:07PM
The Next Best Boo...: If you could buy 5 books...	57	878	Jun 15, 2010 05:58PM

Abraham’s Friend Comments

No comments have been added yet.

Abraham’s Year In Books

Abraham Verghese’s Followers (10,531)

Add New
Videos

Abraham’s Bookshelves

Abraham’s Friends (1)

Abraham Verghese

Goodreads Author

Combine Editions
Abraham Verghese’s books

Related News

Abraham is Currently Reading

rss
Abraham’s Recent Updates

See a Problem?

Preview — True Nature by Lance Richardson

See a Problem?

Preview — True Nature by Lance Richardson

Polls

Topics Mentioning This Author

Abraham’s Friend Comments

Abraham’s Year In Books

Abraham Verghese’s Followers (10,531)

Add NewVideos

Abraham’s Bookshelves

Abraham’s Friends (1)

Abraham Verghese

Goodreads Author

Combine EditionsAbraham Verghese’s books

Related News

Abraham is Currently Reading

rssAbraham’s Recent Updates

See a Problem?

Preview — True Nature by Lance Richardson

See a Problem?

Preview — True Nature by Lance Richardson

Polls

Topics Mentioning This Author

Abraham’s Friend Comments

Add New
Videos

Combine Editions
Abraham Verghese’s books

rss
Abraham’s Recent Updates