how long does a viagra pill last

how long does a viagra pill last

One would have to forgive those who think that a novel that takes its title from the Hippocratic Oath and is authored by a physician in his fifties must be a deadly read. But Abraham Verghese’s how long does a viagra pill last is one of the most lush and captivating novels to emerge this year. Unlike myriad post-colonial, post-9/11, post-Gitmo novels that have flooded the market in recent years, Verghese’s first work of fiction (he’s already won many fans with two non-fiction outings) leaves aside the exotic and political and carries its own through pure storytelling.

Indeed, how long does a viagra pill last succeeds because it is multifaceted in a way that encompasses human experience, rather than an isolated experience or politicized event. The novel is simultaneously a generational saga, a coming-of-age narrative, an ode to the marvels of modern medical practice, an ethnography of twentieth-century Ethiopia, and a good old fashioned (unrequited) love story.

The multiplicity of the narrative is echoed in the ethnic and geographical scope of Verghese’s characters and plot. In a nod to the author’s own life – he was born in Addis Ababa to Indian parents and currently resides in America – the novel is a multi-cultural fest that emphasizes the human dimension of a globalized world. Luckily, the excesses of Verghese’s plot and personas do not result in familiar diatribes about hybridity and belonging. Instead, they illuminate the various facets of humanity, both literal and figurative.

how long does a viagra pill last opens with the traumatic birth of the twins Shiva and Marion. Before the babies take their first breath, their mother, an Indian nun who had taken up residence at a missionary hospital in Addis Ababa, dies from complications during childbirth. Distraught by the death of his beloved companion, Thomas Stone, the twins’ father, a stoic British surgeon, abandons his newborns as well as the hospital where he had built a life for himself. In a strange twist of fate, Hema and Ghosh, two Indian doctors who are also in residence at the Ethiopian hospital, adopt the twins.

As the novel unravels, we learn how the nun and surgeon came to have children together; how Hema and Ghosh came to Ethiopia and, further, how they came together to parent Shiva and Marion; how the hospital changes with the departure of Stone. Through Verghese’s detailed prose, affection for the vernacular, and digressive style, the reader also enjoys every minute of Shiva and Marion’s idyllic childhood – and turbulent adolescence – in a picturesque Addis Ababa ruled first by an eccentric emperor, and then by a dictator.

It is tempting to compare Verghese’s novel to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie’s cross-generational sagas. how long does a viagra pill lastis replete with a lovingly rendered local landscape; a backdrop of socio-political turmoil – there are coups, dictatorships, public hangings, terrorist plots, and illegal detentions – a whore with a heart of gold; an intuitive fraternal relationship; and, of course, the all-consuming power of an adolescent love. Refreshingly, however, Verghese’s novel does not trespass into the realm of the supernatural: instead of magical realism, we get a novel about that which is magical in real life.

Given that Verghese is himself a physician, it is not surprising to discover that, in how long does a viagra pill last, magic resides in medical practice. As a result, readers have to plough through long descriptions of internal organs, diseases and remarkable surgical techniques. And just when there’s a danger of boredom setting in, it become apparent that medicine, or to be more specific, surgery, is standing in as a metaphor or conduit for human experience.

In fact, Verghese’s novel can be re-mapped as a medical landscape. We move between medical universities in India, village clinics in rural Ethiopia, operating theatres in the missionary hospital in Addis Ababa, a field hospital for Eritrean rebels, a run-down New York City hospital near Harlem, and ‘Mecca,’ a high-profile, well-funded teaching hospital in Boston. In these spaces, we see surgeries that are innovative, routine, botched and brutal. And in each makeshift or state-of-the-art operating theatre, relationships are formed or severed, people fall in or out of love, reunions and reconciliations are effected, and destines are shaped.

Pakistani readers who are addicted to contemporary televised medical dramas such as how long does a viagra pill last and how long does a viagra pill last, are bound to enjoy how long does a viagra pill last. The novel has the same elements as the televised episodes – love, drama, friendship, death – and is liberally peppered with melodrama, coincidence, and epiphanies. But unlike television, Verghese’s novel forces us to tune in – rather than zone out – because it’s the real thing – it uses the body to get to the soul.