Cutting For Stone - Tapa dura

A masterly debut novel, visceral in its power, heartbreaking in its tenderness. Transporting the reader from the 1940s to the present, from a convent in India to a cargo ship bound for the Yemen, from a tiny operating theatre in Ethiopia to a hospital in the Bronx, Cutting for Stone is a thrilling epic of conjoined twins, doctors and patients, temptation and redemption, home and exile--and a riveting family story, irresistibly charged with strange happenings, humour and pathos, that grabs you from its harrowing opening and never lets go. 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. Cutting for Stone is both an unforgettable story of lives cut in half and a gripping evocation of the power, intimacy, danger and curious beauty of the ancient art of medicine.

Transporting the reader from the 1940s to the present, from a convent in India to a cargo ship bound for the Yemen, from a tiny operating theatre in Ethiopia to a hospital in the Bronx, Cutting for Stone is a thrilling epic of conjoined twins, doctors and patients, temptation and redemption, home and exile – and a riveting family story, irresistibly charged with strange happenings, humour and pathos, that grabs you from its harrowing opening and never lets go. Marion and Shiva Stone, half-Indian and half-British, are twin sons of a secret union at ‘Missing’, a hospital run by nuns in Addis Ababa. Born in extraordinary circumstances, the brothers couldn’t be more different – Marion, introspective and eager to please, Shiva, a loner with fewer scruples and a photographic memory – but are bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared passion for medicine, and cricket. They come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. The Italians have left behind in Addis cappuccino machines and Campari umbrellas. But they've also left a nation crippled by poverty, hunger, and authoritarian rule: Ethiopia in the 1960s and 1970s is both bolstered and trapped by its emperor, Haile Selassie. Yet it will be love, not politics – their passion for the same woman – that tears the twins 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, in a stunning twist, Marion must trust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world. Cutting for Stone is both an unforgettable story of lives cut in half and a gripping evocation of the power, intimacy, danger and curious beauty of the art of medicine. A masterly debut novel, it is visceral in its power, heartbreaking in its tenderness.