Abraham Verghese at a Glance

Full Name: Abraham Verghese

Pronunciation: AY-bruh-ham vur-GHEES

Born: May 30, 1955

Nationality: United States

Education:

• Madras University (Bachelor of Medicine)
• University of Iowa (MFA, Creative Writing)

Genres:

• Memoir
• Contemporary fiction
• Historical fiction

Biography & Background

Abraham Verghese Biography

Abraham Verghese is a best-selling American author and practicing physician. He is currently the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor of Medicine at Stanford University Medical School, where he also serves as the internal medicine clerkship director.

Verghese was born on May 30, 1955, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where his Indian parents worked as teachers. He began studying medicine in Ethiopia but emigrated to the United States during a period of civil unrest following the overthrow of Emperor Halie Selassie. After working for a year as a hospital orderly, he moved to India to complete his medical training at Madras University. He then returned to the US, where he practiced medicine in East Tennessee and Boston in the early 1980s, a period that coincided with the beginnings of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States. His experiences as a physician in this era inspired his second career as a writer, and he took a hiatus from medicine to attend the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa.