Cutting for Stone

Verghese's Addis Ababa is a highland capital of eucalyptus, corrugated iron and mission medicine, seen from a hospital where twin brothers are born and grow up. The map holds the old town around Piazza, the cathedral and the emperor's palace, and follows the city through the fall of Haile Selassie and the rise of the Derg before the story leaves Ethiopia for exile abroad.

Marion Stone

Missing Hospital

Birth

The twins Marion and Shiva Stone are born here, on a compound of wards, chapel and eucalyptus that stands in for the mission hospitals of the city. Verghese has said the name came from a clerk who could not spell Mission, and the place is a composite rather than one building. We site it at a real fistula hospital in Lideta to fix the world it belongs to.

Part One

inspired by Missing is a fictional mission hospital, a composite of the church-run medical compounds of mid-century Addis Ababa; its name is a clerk's misspelling of Mission. This marks a representative real point, the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Lideta, the kind of mission institution Verghese drew on.

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