Cutting for Stone

Cutting for Stone is a 2009 novel by the Ethiopian-born Indian-American physician and author Abraham Verghese. It is the story of twin brothers orphaned by their mother's death at their birth and abandoned by their father.

The narrator is Marion Stone, one of the twins, and the book opens with his birth at Mission Hospital in Addis Ababa, called Missing in accordance with the local pronunciation. His mother, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, dies in labour, and his father is not present afterwards, so the children grow up inside the institution and among the medical staff, who become the family the novel is actually about. Because Marion narrates from his own birth, the family's earlier history arrives inside his own account rather than before it.

The book contains detailed descriptions of medical procedures alongside an examination of the human side of medical practice, which reflects the author's own profession and is the reason it is often described as a medical novel as well as a family saga. It spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list, was generally well received by critics, was placed on Barack Obama's summer reading list, and was optioned for adaptation.