Throughout history, there has been a succession of physicians who have gone on to become celebrated authors: Anton Chekov, William Carlos Williams and Somerset Maugham, to name a few. And recently, there have been a number of notable additions to this list. Khaled Hosseini, an internist, was practicing medicine while he wrote his first novel, The Kite Runner. Daniel Mason was in medical school while he penned his best-selling novel, The Piano Tuner.

And then there's the extraordinary Abraham Verghese.

Verghese's first book, My Own Country, was recognized as a New York Times Notable Book of 1994. In it, he documents his experience practicing medicine in Johnson City, Tenn., where he became a pioneering physician in the treatment of rural AIDS. In the following years, he published another New York Times Notable Book, The Tennis Partner; went on to become a professor at the Stanford School of Medicine; and wrote his first novel, Cutting for Stone.

Released this month, this new novel is a staggering work, a beautifully crafted account of one man's birth, exile and return to his native Ethiopia.

Verghese was born in Ethiopia to Orthodox Christian parents from Kerala, in South India. His own life, in fact, reads very much like a novel: He was raised in Ethiopia and entered medical school there. When the emperor was deposed in a coup, Verghese fled to America and then to India, where he finished his medical training.

Verghese's intimate knowledge of Ethiopia and his experience of being a ferengi, or foreigner, born in this African country, inform his novel in incredible ways. His medical experience also plays an important role.

The narrator of the novel, Marion Stone, is a surgeon. He and his twin brother were born at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia. "The miracle of our birth," Marion says, "took place in Missing Hospital's Operating Theater 3, the very room where our mother, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, spent most of her working hours."

The twins' mother was a beautiful young nun from the Carmelite Order of Madras, in India. For seven years, she had been working at Missing Hospital ("Missing was really Mission Hospital," Marion says, "a word that on the Ethiopian tongue came out with a hiss so it sounded like Missing") with the brilliant English surgeon, Thomas Stone. On the day of her unexpected labor, Stone is summoned to her room, where he finds her lying in agony on her narrow cot.

Stone reaches for her pulse, which is rapid and feeble. He is taken completely by surprise, blindsided and devastated by her condition.

"The sight of the blubbering, helpless Stone shocked Matron, just as much as the sight of Sister Mary Joseph Praise's terrible state. Lord, he's done it again, was Matron's first thought. It was a well-kept secret," Verghese writes, "that Stone had on three or four occasions since his arrival at Missing gone on a drunken binge. For a man who rarely drank, who loved his work, who found sleep a distraction, who had to be reminded to go to bed, these episodes were mystifying."

Verghese does an amazing job narrating these sequences of events - the pace is breathtaking, but the writing remains rich and evocative. Verghese alternates between Stone's attempts to save Mary's life and the story that brought them together. He describes Mary's arduous journey from India to Ethiopia and her first, life-changing encounter with the surgeon. Verghese also intersperses information about Dr. Hemlatha (Hema), Missing Hospital's only gynecologist, who was at that very moment returning to Ethiopia from a rare trip home to India.

It's a breathless sequence, impossibly riveting - especially considering that the prologue reveals that Mary dies in childbirth. This sense of urgency is a testament to Verghese's incredible skill as a storyteller. And this skill is evident throughout the rest of the novel, as well.

The twins, Marion (named after a famous gynecologist), and Shiva (named after the Hindu god), are raised by Hema and by Ghosh, the hospital's internist. These surrogate parents and their Ethiopian staff create an intimate and fascinating family.

The security of this family structure is threatened, though, when Marion is 12 years old. A friend of the family, Gen. Mebratu, stages a bloodless coup, deposing the Ethiopian emperor. After several days of standoff, Mebratu is defeated, and Hema and Ghosh are implicated, simply by having been friends of the General. "When (the hospital guard) met us at the gate," Marion says, "and said men had come and snatched Ghosh from Missing, my childhood ended."

It's another fascinating sequence, the events of which lead, several years later, to Marion fleeing the country, shuttled from Addis Ababa to Asmara, in the heart of Eritrea, hidden under a tarp in the back of an army supply truck. He makes his way to New York City, where he finishes his medical residency at an underfunded, understaffed hospital in the Bronx. It is here that the novel comes full-circle, as Marion searches for his biological father, Thomas Stone; discovers a secret letter from his mother, Sister Mary Joseph Praise; and begins to heal a rift with his twin brother, Shiva.

Verghese does an amazing job with the plot, reintroducing characters from Marion's past in unexpected and tragic ways. He weaves the threads of the story together with incredible skill, resulting in a novel that is beautifully written, complex and satisfying.

Verghese is a master storyteller, and Cutting for Stone is a brilliant first novel.

Ashley Simpson Shires' fiction has appeared in the American Literary Review, the Brooklyn Review and other publications. She lives in Boulder.

Cutting for Stone

* By Abraham Verghese. Knopf, 534 pages, $26.95.

* Grade: A

In person

Verghese will appear at 7:30 p.m. March 5 at the Tattered Cover's Colfax location, 2526 E. Colfax Ave. at Elizabeth Street. Information: 303-322-7727.