When a tennis ritual evolves between Dr. Abraham Verghese and his medical student, David, a former professional tennis play, it rekindles the author''s romance with tennis that began as a child. Their meetings on the court and in the hospital in the border city of El Paso eas the pain of Verghese''s disintergrating marriage and soften his sense of alienation as a foreigner. As the friendship between the two men grows, the bonds between them deepen. They are in turn professor and student, confessor and keeper of secrets. aWhen David succumbs to a ghost of his past, his life is sent spiraling out of control. Forced to come to terms with David''s tragic fate, Verghese gains a profound new understanding of the deepest meaning of friendship.

“With writerly grace, Verghese introduces us to the disciplines he holds sacred: tennis, internal medicine, fatherhood, male friendship. Everywhere he is a diagnostician, a teacher, a lover of physical presence. But finally as he walks the back alleys of El Paso searching for his drug-abusing colleague, we understand who Verghese is at his core, a man of honor who goes down mean streets and remains himself good enough for any world. This is an extraordinary book.”

Autorentext

A practicing physician and a professor of medicine at Stanford University, Abraham Verghese is the author of My Own Country and Cutting for Stone. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, and other publications. He lives in Palo Alto, California.

Klappentext

An unforgettable, illuminating story of how men live and how they survive, from the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Cutting for Stone

When Abraham Verghese, a physician whose marriage is unraveling, relocates to El Paso, Texas, he hopes to make a fresh start as a staff member at the county hospital. There he meets David Smith, a medical student recovering from drug addiction, and the two men begin a tennis ritual that allows them to shed their inhibitions and find security in the sport they love and with each other. This friendship between doctor and intern grows increasingly rich and complex, more intimate than two men usually allow. Just when it seems nothing can go wrong, the dark beast from David’s past emerges once again—and almost everything Verghese has come to trust and believe in is threatened as David spirals out of control.