Writer Abraham Verghese: Fiction Is a Great Lie Telling the Truth | Louisiana Channel
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- Опубліковано 11 лют 2025
- God is in the details. Both in medical school and in writing.”
We met bestselling author and doctor Abraham Verghese for a wonderful conversation about writing, reading, and the importance of literature.
“I do think that books can give hope.”
“Proust said that we don't read the novel. The novel reads us. We respond to it because it's diagnosing us and doing something to our soul to explain who we are. And so, I think the moment societies don't read very much, they're not reflective and begin to censor and ban books. And you're on the verge of something very, very dangerous.”
“I think the mark of our society is that a book can suddenly take the place by storm and capture people's imagination, and it can change people. One example is Uncle Tom's Cabin in America. That one novel, for all its weaknesses, ended slavery in America. It wasn't a president; it wasn't a civil war. One novel captured the public's imagination and made them realize that this was not palatable to own and sell other human beings.”
Abraham Verghese (b. 1955) was born and raised in Ethiopia as the child of Indian teachers. After the military coup in 1974, he and his family left the country and settled in the United States, where Verghese became a citizen. Today, he is a professor of medicine at Standford University and has received multiple honorary doctorate degrees as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2023. In 2015, President Barack Obama presented him with the National Humanities Medal.
Verghese is the author of two bestselling novels that have received wide public attention. Cutting for Stone was published in 2009 and remained on The New York Times bestseller list for over two years. It also topped the Independent Booksellers list. The Covenant of Water was published in 2023, stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for 37 weeks, and was listed by the newspaper as one of its 100 Notable Books of 2023. In January 2024, Oprah Winfrey announced that she had optioned the film rights. Before that, she had declared The Covenant of Water one of her favorite books.
Abraham Verghese was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in November 2024. The conversation took place at Verghese’s Danish Publisher Gyldendal in Copenhagen.
Camera: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan
Edited by: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2025
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Looks like I need to read The Covenant of Water. So refreshing to listen to a literary mind share such intelligent observations.
Wonderful, thank you. So interesting.
The last words remind me frequently thinking about the actor and singer David Hasselhoff (and composer Horst Nussbaum aka Jack White). That song "Looking For Freedom" was more than the soundtrack but essential for opening up the momentum of Germany's peaceful process of revolution and reunification 1989/91. Not to forget the two other parts of that soundtrack: Marius Müller-Westernhagen's "Freiheit" and "Wind if change" of the Scorpions. Thinking about their efforts now i'm deeply greatful to that part of history.
That's my opinion and i'm ashamed, that some people in Germany are not accomplishing that role. There were some mean Jokes an Hasselhoff overestimating his role but i'm with those artists.
Concerned parents who want to remove books from school that can lead their impressionable children in a dangerous direction, they should have that right to do so.
Make this man president.
A good one does ❤
Painful! Are you trying to put us to sleep?