Abraham Verghese Biography
Abraham Verghese was born in Ethiopia in 1955, of Southern Indian,
Christian, parents who had emigrated to Ethiopia. He attended medical school in
Ethiopia, but was forced to leave in 1973 due to the unstable political
situation.
He worked as an orderly in various hospitals in the United States, then went to
India to complete his medical education at the Madras Medical College in India.
In 1980, he returned to America. He did his internship and residency in Johnson
City, Tennessee, went to Boston to train as a specialist in infectious diseases,
and returned to Johnson City to practice his specialty. It was there that he
unexpectedly found himself dealing more and more with HIV and AIDS, which became
the focus of his career. He spent four years in Johnson City (1985-1989)
becoming an expert on the disease.
In 1990, Verghese moved to Iowa, where he worked at the University of Iowa
outpatient AIDS clinic. He also attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop under the
mentorship of John Irving, and while there he was encouraged to turn his Johnson
City experiences into a book - My Own Country which was nominated for the
National Book Critics Circle Award.
He wrote a second memoir in 1999, The Tennis Partner. His first work of
fiction, Cutting for Stone, an epic story set in both the Ethiopia of his
childhood and the USA, will be published in February 2009.
He is currently a professor of internal medicine at Stanford University. He has
three children and lives in Palo Alto, California.
This biography was last updated on 12/13/2008.
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