Alice Walker gave a quote for the book saying: “I love Minal Hajratwala’s book Leaving India. It is what I imagine India itself to be like: incomparable, sprawling, rich, surprising, very old and wise and forever capable of re-creating itself, no matter where pieces of it land.”

In a Washington Post review, Sadia Shepard writes that “Hajratwala’s goal is to tease out where personal motives for migration intersect with the forces of politics and economics, to ‘find the meeting place where character intersects with history.’”

Minal will be reading in NYC on Monday, March 23, from 6:00pm-7:30pm at the Corner Bookstore. The store is located at 1313 Madison Avenue (between E 92nd and E 93rd St). More event around the country can be found on Minal’s website.

Part I, The idea behind the book:

Part II, The author reads from a section of her book:

He was born to Indian parents in Ethiopia and was expelled from the country of his birth after a military coup, making a home in his adopted country – the United States. His new book, Cutting for Stone, a work of fiction, takes him back to the geography that he knows best – that of Ethiopia. It’s a tale of twin boys born to an Indian nun and then raised by another doctor couple in the hospital.

Entertainment Weekly gave the book an “A” grade and said: “Verghese can write about the repair of a twisted bowel with the precision and poetry usually reserved for love scenes. The doctor in him sees the luminous beauty of the physician’s calling; the artist recognizes that there remain wounds no surgeon can mend.”

Part I: Writing fiction & practicing medicine; Verghese reads a from “Cutting for Stone.”:

Part II: Bringing the Humanities to the practice of medicine:

Part III: On Naveen Andrews as Dr. Verghese and what’s next:

Related reviews:

Washington Post: Healing the Past, A doctor’s search for his twin brother.

The Boston Bibliophile

The San Francisco Chronicle

Upcoming event:

The South Asian Journalists Association will be hosting a live webcast on Tuesday, Feb 17, 12:30-1:30 pm ET (see local time around the world: http://snurl.com/bim5l) with Verghese, who’ll be interviewed by Newsweek contributing editor Vibhuti Patel. Listen live, or later to a recording:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/saja/2009/02/17/Dr-Abraham-Verghese

In this three-part video interview, Aseem talks with Karan Mahajan about his debut novel Family Planning. The 24-year-old author discusses the novel’s inspiration, the writing process and how he avoided creating an exotic India.

The video can be viewed in High Definition. First hit the play button in the center of the screen, then click the triangle in the bottom right corner of the screen. You will see the “HQ” option. Click that to play the video in “High Quality”.

Part I: “Humor gets sharpened when one is put in an alien situation.”

Part II: No sari or man on a camel on the cover.

Part III: “I feel a deep affinity with Jewish American writers.”