Fourteen years have passed since Abraham Verghese’s last novel, the bestseller Hijos del ancho mundo (Salamandra), but it should not be taken into account. In addition to writing ambitious literary series, he is also a doctor, researcher, vice dean at Stanford’s Faculty of Medicine and, in his spare time, presents a successful podcast. Born in Ethiopia in 1968, son of Indian migrants and raised in the United States, in his latest novel, El pacto del agua, he dares, for the first time, to place a story in the country of his ancestors, India .
I am impressed to interview someone who has spent more than two hours being interviewed by Oprah Winfrey.
My publisher knew that since it was an Oprah book club pick, they needed to print more copies, but they weren’t counting on her enthusiasm for the book. When we went on sale, people wanted it and there weren’t enough. We had to run to print more.
Did you have to reach a certain point of experience in life to be able to write a story like that?
When I finished the previous book, I thought I had put it all out there. This one is special to me. There was a review in The New York Times that threw a few punches. One was that all my characters are good. I think this is because of my belief that people mean well.
It is the first time he has set a novel in India, which is the country of his parents and ancestors. Did he have to give himself permission to do that?
It was delicate for many Indians, who may think: what does this one know? The truth is that I spent all my childhood summers with my grandparents in Kerala, so it is not a foreign country to me. But yes, I had to feel that I had a right to tell this story.
He comes from a long tradition of writers who are also doctors. What has medicine contributed to your books?
We doctors have a great desire to explain what we have seen. We are in a privileged place, seeing life at its most serious and dramatic moments and you can barely talk about it. I am fortunate to have found in writing the way to address many of the things that are important.
Did you take the famous University of Iowa writing workshop while studying medicine?
When I was studying, I had no intention of being a writer. I was an infectious disease specialist and moved to a small town in Tennessee. They told me ‘You won’t have AIDS patients there, it’s an urban disease’. But it was the opposite. Many young gay men had gone to the cities because they no longer wanted to live under the scrutiny of their relatives. But when the virus found them, they were returning home. I wrote a scientific paper describing the phenomenon, but found that language did not even begin to capture the tragic nature of this journey. I then applied to the Iowa Writing Program and got in.
Do you think your practice as a doctor has made you understand death differently?
I have to say that every time I went back to those scenes I started to cry. As a doctor, I see that many people are in denial about the suffering and mortality that surrounds us and only become aware of it when a shock hits them.
Did you get this revelation when you started working as a doctor?
During the AIDS era, yes. All the men I saw die were my age. And some of them had already done so many things in life, in terms of traveling, experimenting, getting to know art, music. And this also pushed me to discard the job security I had then to dedicate myself to writing.
Does the current opioid crisis in the United States remind you of those early years of HIV?
My second book was about drug addiction among doctors and it’s funny how many people are coming back to it. Now the opioid crisis is getting so much attention because it’s reaching white privileged people, but it’s been a long time coming.
The story begins with the wedding of a 12-year-old girl who marries a 40-year-old man.
Both my grandmothers got married at the age of ten and eleven. They were alliances of families, like those of royalty in Europe. They got married and became girls from the other house. They established a closer relationship with mothers-in-law than with their own mothers.
It is even done in Indian culture, the matchmaking of arranged marriages.
I know many highly qualified professionals who reach a point in life where their dating is going nowhere and they know that the parents will find them someone who will be compatible and with whom they can form a suitable marriage. At its core, Tinder is the modern version of arranged marriages. It’s hard for me to fathom, but I’ve also been married and divorced, so I don’t know if I did better by choosing my own partner. Maybe I should have left it to my parents.
You, who have lived between three continents, often say that you are envious of people who are clear about where they mean when they say “home”.
But I have the permanent perspective of the outsider. One of my books is set in Tennessee, another in El Paso. I’ve written a novel set in Ethiopia and now finally in India, and the most rewarding thing I’ve heard is, “I’ve lived there all my life and I’ve never seen anything like this.” It gives you the ability to appreciate things that the locals don’t see.
