Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Six outstanding books on health, illness or medicine

The winner of the inaugural Wellcome Trust Book Prize was announced this month.

The award is open to outstanding works of fiction and non-fiction on the theme of health, illness or medicine. One of the six books to make the shortlist:
Cutting for Stone
Abraham Verghese

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin sons of a secret union between an Indian nun and a British surgeon at 'Missing' hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother's death in childbirth and their father's disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the brothers come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics - their passion for the same woman - that tears them apart and forces Marion to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as a surgical intern at an underfunded, overcrowded hospital. When the past catches up with him, Marion must trust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him, and the brother who betrayed him.
Read about the winner of the 2009 Wellcome Trust Book Prize.

See: Writers Read: Abraham Verghese.

--Marshal Zeringue