Abraham Verghese is the heir to the tradition of doctors who write, such as Anton Chekhov, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mikhail Bulgakov and William Carlos Williams. He was born in Ethiopia to Indian parents and began studying medicine in Addis Ababa. In the third year of study, civil war broke out and the military government closed the university. Then he went to the USA, where he worked for a year and a half in New Jersey as a nurse. He calls this work "the most important medical education I've ever had." The article presents him as a doctor and writer who perceives the body as a text.