Literary Birthday – 30 May – Abraham Verghese

Happy Birthday, Abraham Verghese, born on 30 May 1955.

Abraham Verghese Quotes

1. I wanted the reader to see how entering medicine was a passionate quest, a romantic pursuit, a spiritual calling, a privileged yet hazardous undertaking. It’s a view of medicine I don’t think too many young people see in the West because, frankly, in the sterile hallways of modern medical-industrial complexes, where physicians and nurses are hunkered down behind computer monitors, and patients are whisked off here and there for all manner of tests, that side of medicine gets lost. (Website)
2. Though I am fascinated by knowledge, I am even more fascinated by wisdom. (A-Z)
3. Literature is a beautiful way of keeping the imagination alive, of visiting worlds you would never have time to in your day-to-day life. It keeps you abreast of a wider spectrum of human activities. (A-Z)
4. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny. (A-Z)
5. There is that lovely feeling of one reader telling another, ‘You must read this.’ I’ve always wanted to write a book like that, with the sense that you are contributing to the discourse in middle America, a discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me. (A-Z)
6. In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina. (A-Z)
7. My writing flows out of my doctorhood. They are not separate things. They are one. I think the foremost connection between being a doctor and being a writer is the great privilege of having an intimate view of one’s fellow humans, the privilege of being there and helping other people at their most vulnerable moments. (BrainyQuote)

Abraham Verghese is an award-winning Ethiopian-American author and physician of Malayali descent. Overwhelmed by working with AIDS patients for a while, Verghese joined the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. He cashed in his retirement plan and his tenured position to move to Iowa City with his young family. In 1991, he completed a Master of Fine Arts. He is the author of four bestselling books: two memoirs and two novels. They are My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story, The Tennis Partner: A Story of Friendship and Loss, Cutting for Stone, and The Covenant of Water. In January 2024, Oprah announced that she had optioned the film rights for The Covenant of Water. According to his website, ‘In his writing and work, Abraham Verghese continues to emphasize the importance of bedside medicine and physical examination in an era of advanced medical technology. He contends that the patient in the bed often gets less attention than the patient data in the computer.’ In 2014, he received the 19th Annual Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities. President Barack Obama presented him with the National Humanities Medal in 2015. In 2023, Verghese was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has received seven honorary doctorate degrees. Follow whim on Instagram.

Source for photograph: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dr_Abraham_Verghese_in_2023_06.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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