Abraham Verghese

ABRAHAM VERGHESE is one of the most respected and powerful writers to appear on the American nonfiction scene in the 1990s. His first book, "My Own Country: A Doctor's Story" received outstanding reviews that praised the quality of the writing and the deep passion expressed in his memoirs about treating AIDS in small-town USA - Johnson City, Tennessee, to be precise. Time magazine called it one of the five best books of 1994. The New York Times Book Review called the book "an account of the plague years in America, beautifully written, fascinating and tragic, by a doctor who was shaped and changed by his patients." In his second book, "The Tennis Partner: A Story of Friendship and Loss" (Harper Collins, September 1998) he penned a riveting work about coming to personal terms with love and loss through the death of his best friend and tennis partner. "My Own Country" was made into a Showtime original movie directed by Mira Nair ("Mississippi Masala" & "Kama Sutra" and starred Naveen Andrews ("The English Patient") as the author. Verghese was born in Ethiopia in 1955 to parents who were immigrants from India. He attended medical school in Ethiopia and worked in various hospitals in the U.S. before going to Madras to complete his medical education. In 1980, returned to the U.S., where he did his internship and residency in Johnson Hill, Tennessee. In 1990, Verghese worked at the University of Iowa's outpatient AIDS clinic. While there, he attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop and was encouraged to turn his Johnson City experiences into a book. He has also written for The New Yorker, Granta, Talk, Sports Illustrated and many medical journals.