Author Guide · Literary Fiction and Medical Memoir
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In the mid-1980s Abraham Verghese was a young infectious-disease doctor in Johnson City, Tennessee, and became, almost by accident, the town’s AIDS specialist, often the only person at a patient’s bedside. Born in Addis Ababa in 1955 to Indian parents from Kerala, he trained in Ethiopia and Madras, took an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1991, and still practises as a professor of medicine at Stanford. He has published slowly: two memoirs in the 1990s, a novel in 2009 that sold more than a million copies, a second novel fourteen years later, and a short story. This guide covers his 5 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 key books · 1994–2025 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Abraham Verghese has published four books and a standalone short story: My Own Country (1994), The Tennis Partner (1998), Cutting for Stone (2009), The Covenant of Water (2023) and Abscond (2025). Start with Cutting for Stone, his best-known novel; read on for which memoir to pick up next and how the two novels connect.
Where to Start with Abraham Verghese
If you want his best-known novel
→ Cutting for Stone (2009) — twin surgeons, Ethiopia and New York.
If you want a long family saga
→ The Covenant of Water (2023) — three generations in Kerala, 1900–1977.
If you want true stories from a doctor’s life
→ My Own Country (1994) — the AIDS years in rural Tennessee.
If you want something short
→ Abscond (2025).
5 Abraham Verghese Books, in Order
My Own Country
Verghese’s account of his years as an infectious-disease physician in Johnson City, Tennessee, in the mid-1980s, when he became the town’s de facto AIDS doctor and cared for patients whose families were often frightened or absent. It was a New York Times Notable Book of 1994 and won the 1995 Lambda Literary Award for gay men’s biography and autobiography. Mira Nair directed a television film of it for Showtime in 1998, with Naveen Andrews as Verghese.
The Tennis Partner
Newly arrived in El Paso, Texas, with his marriage coming apart, Verghese befriends David Smith, a medical resident and former tennis professional recovering from drug addiction. Their weekly singles matches turn into a close friendship, with the roles of teacher and student reversed on the court, until Smith relapses and dies. In 2019 Slate placed it among the 50 best nonfiction books of the previous 25 years.
Cutting for Stone
Marion and Shiva Stone, twin brothers born conjoined in 1954 at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa, lose their mother, an Indian nun, in childbirth, and are abandoned by their father, an English surgeon. Raised by two doctors at the hospital, they grow up through Ethiopia’s political upheavals, until Marion flees to New York and meets the father who left. The novel spent about two years on the New York Times bestseller list, sold over a million copies by 2012, and was shortlisted for the 2009 Wellcome Trust Book Prize.
The Covenant of Water
Three generations of a Christian family in Travancore, later Kerala, from 1900 to 1977, beginning with a 12-year-old girl married to a widower who becomes the matriarch known as Big Ammachi. In every generation someone in the family drowns, and her granddaughter Mariamma, a neurosurgeon, sets out to find the cause; a parallel story follows the Scottish surgeon Digby Kilgour. Oprah Winfrey chose it as her 101st Book Club pick in May 2023 and optioned the screen rights in 2024; it spent 37 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Abscond
A short story of about forty pages, published on its own as an e-book and audiobook in July 2025. In New Jersey in the summer of 1967, Ravi Ramanathan, a thirteen-year-old tennis prodigy, lives with his surgeon father’s expectations and his mother’s hopes that he will follow his father into medicine, until a sudden event forces him to take on a new role in the family.
In What Order to Read Abraham Verghese
The books stand alone, so the order is yours. The two novels are not a series, but they share territory: both follow doctors and the families around them, and both are long (around 650 and 730 pages), so it helps to have time before starting either one.
The memoirs are the background to the novels. My Own Country and The Tennis Partner show the physician who later wrote fiction about hospitals, and reading one of them after Cutting for Stone makes clear how much of the novel’s medicine comes from his own practice.
A reading path
1. Cutting for Stone (2009)
2. My Own Country (1994)
3. The Covenant of Water (2023)
4. The Tennis Partner (1998)
5. Abscond (2025)
The years · 1955–2023
Quick facts about Abraham Verghese
- Known for
- Writing about medicine from the doctor’s side of the bed, in memoirs of the AIDS years and in two long novels about physicians and their families.
- 1955
- Born in Addis Ababa to parents from Kerala
- 1974
- Leaves Ethiopia amid the revolution
- 1994
- My Own Country
- Born
- 30 May 1955, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; his parents were teachers from Kerala
- Education
- MBBS, Madras Medical College (1979); MFA, Iowa Writers’ Workshop (1991)
- Medicine
- Infectious-disease physician; at Stanford University School of Medicine since 2007
- Honours
- Heinz Award (2014); National Humanities Medal (2015)
- Adaptations
- My Own Country, Showtime film directed by Mira Nair (1998)
- Book club
- The Covenant of Water, Oprah’s Book Club pick no. 101 (2023)
The red mark is 2009: Cutting for Stone, the novel that brought him a mass readership.
How Abraham Verghese Writes: The Physician’s Eye
Verghese writes as a working doctor, and the clinical detail is exact: operations, diagnoses and the body itself are described at length and with precision. The titles carry it. “Cutting for stone” refers to the old surgical removal of bladder stones, named in the Hippocratic Oath, and in The Covenant of Water the family’s drownings turn out to be a medical mystery that a neurosurgeon solves.
His novels are long, multi-generational and told across decades and continents: Ethiopia, India, Britain and the United States. Political history runs underneath the family story, from the fall of Haile Selassie in Cutting for Stone to colonial rule, independence and the Naxalite movement in The Covenant of Water. Some critics found Cutting for Stone too baggy, with the medical passages slowing the plot.
The memoirs work the other way, close and personal. Both are about relationships formed in hospitals, with patients in My Own Country and with a younger colleague in The Tennis Partner, and both show his main theme as a teacher of medicine: the doctor at the bedside, paying attention to the patient as a person. The White House citation for his National Humanities Medal praised him for reminding us that the patient is at the centre of medicine.
Watch
Abraham Verghese on family, medicine and writing
Stanford Medicine dean Lloyd Minor talks with Verghese on The Minor Consult about the family history behind The Covenant of Water, the links between medicine and writing, and how he found his voice.
Frequently asked questions about Abraham Verghese’s books
How many books has Abraham Verghese written?
Five, counting a short story published on its own: two memoirs, My Own Country (1994) and The Tennis Partner (1998); two novels, Cutting for Stone (2009) and The Covenant of Water (2023); and the short story Abscond (2025).
What are Abraham Verghese’s books in order?
My Own Country (1994), The Tennis Partner (1998), Cutting for Stone (2009), The Covenant of Water (2023) and Abscond (2025).
Where should I start with Abraham Verghese?
Cutting for Stone (2009), the story of twin brothers born at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. If you prefer nonfiction, start with My Own Country, his memoir of treating AIDS patients in Tennessee in the 1980s.
What is Abraham Verghese’s most famous book?
Cutting for Stone, which spent about two years on the New York Times bestseller list and had sold more than a million copies by 2012. The Covenant of Water (2023) was an Oprah’s Book Club pick and spent 37 weeks on the same list.
Is The Covenant of Water a sequel to Cutting for Stone?
No. It is a separate novel with different characters, set in Kerala, India, from 1900 to 1977. The two books share themes, medicine and family, but can be read in either order.
Is Cutting for Stone being made into a film?
A film was announced in 2012, with Susanne Bier attached to direct and Scott Teems writing the screenplay, but it has not been made. The Covenant of Water was optioned by Oprah Winfrey in 2024, and My Own Country became a Showtime television film directed by Mira Nair in 1998.
Is Abraham Verghese a real doctor?
Yes. He is a physician specialising in infectious diseases and internal medicine, and a professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, where he has worked since 2007. He teaches bedside skills, including the physical examination of patients.
Is My Own Country a true story?
Yes. It is a memoir of his years as an infectious-disease doctor in Johnson City, Tennessee, in the mid-1980s, when he treated many of the region’s first AIDS patients.
What awards has Abraham Verghese won?
My Own Country won the 1995 Lambda Literary Award for gay men’s biography and autobiography, and Cutting for Stone was shortlisted for the 2009 Wellcome Trust Book Prize. He received the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities in 2014 and the 2015 National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama.
Is Abraham Verghese still alive?
Yes. He was born on 30 May 1955 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and continues to teach and practise medicine at Stanford.
Footnotes
- Abraham Verghese — Wikipedia
- Cutting for Stone — Wikipedia
- My Own Country — Wikipedia
- Abraham Verghese — National Endowment for the Humanities
- Oprah’s 101st Book Club pick: The Covenant of Water — Oprah.com
- The Covenant of Water — Publishers Weekly
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“We took our first breaths at an elevation of eight thousand feet in the thin air of Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia.”
— Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone (2009)
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