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.