Simply put, with her at the helm, Cutting for Stone could prove captivating. However, Bier is an excellent choice to direct, as she's shown a stunning talent for painting emotionally complex films with implicating visuals over exposition-heavy dialogue. Therefore Cutting for Stone sounds like it could be a complicated story to translate into a movie. This winding narrative that follows two generations of a family that includes twin brothers straightaway reminds me of John Steinbeck's East of Eden, which was essentially cut in half in its 1955 movie adaptation that famously starred James Dean. The novel was informed by the Ethiopian-born Verghese's own experiences as a doctor, as detailed in his memoir My Own Country, and will be adapted by screenwriter Scott Teems, who wrote and directed the Hal Holbrook-fronted drama That Evening Sun.

Contrary to trepanation and circumcision, which were undoubtedly older incisions, lithotomy was free of any religious background. Still, the boys' share their father's gift for healing as well as a preternatural bond with each other both elements help them cope with the changing cultural landscape of Ethiopia as they mature. Cutting for the stone was probably the earliest operation performed in an attempt to relieve the human body of pain. Although it’s also a play on the surname of the characters, the title Cutting for Stone comes from a line in the Hippocratic Oath: I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art. Their taboo relationship eventually yields two sons, who experience a tragic childhood after their mother dies and father vanishes. On a tumultuous sea journey she saves his life, and when destiny reunites them years later in a mission in Ethiopia, romance blossoms. Cutting for Stone A Novel Written by: Abraham Verghese Read by: Sunil Malhotra PEN New England/Hemingway Foundation Award Synopsis Praise A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novelan enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home. Sister Mary Joseph Praise is a pious young nun in 1940s India, who meets an arrogant but debonair British doctor, Thomas Stone, while traveling to her missionary post in Yemen.

Like cutting for stone