My Own Country
by Abraham Verghese
List Price: $13.00
Pages: 448
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0679752927
Publisher: Vintage
Abraham Verghese was born in Ethiopia in 1955, of Southern Indian, Christian,
parents. He attended medical school in Ethiopia, worked as an orderly
in various hospitals in the United States, then went to India to complete
his medical education. In 1980, he returned to America. He did his internship
and residency in Johnson City, Tennessee, went to Boston to train as a
specialist in infectious diseases, and returned to Johnson City to practice
his specialty. It was there that he unexpectedly found himself dealing
more and more, finally almost exclusively, with HIV and AIDS, which soon
became his metier, the focus of his career. He spent four years in Johnson
City, 1985 through 1989, becoming an expert on the disease.
In 1990, Verghese moved to Iowa, where he worked at the University of Iowa outpatient AIDS clinic.
He also attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and while there he was encouraged
to turn his Johnson City experiences into a book. Verghese is now Professor
of Medicine and Chief of Infectious Diseases at Texas Tech Health Sciences
Center in El Paso, Texas.
My Own Country is Verghese's first full-length book. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker,
Granta, The North American Review, Sports Illustrated, Story,
and many medical journals.
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