“Sometimes the roads we walked as a child shape our journeys for the rest of our lives.”
On Sale May 12, 2026
About Fazlur
Fazlur Rahman was born and brought up in what is now Bangladesh. After his medical education in Dhaka, New York, and Houston, he practiced cancer medicine for thirty-five years in San Angelo, Texas. He is an adjunct professor of biology (medical humanities and ethics) at Angelo State University, a senior trustee of Austin College in Sherman, Texas, and an advisory council member of the Charles E. Cheever Jr. Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. His writings on medical, ethical, social, and scientific issues have appeared in many national and international publications.
About The Temple Road
A veteran cancer physician, Dr Fazlur Rahman’s story is astonishing. He was born and raised in a Mullah family, an old-line Muslim clan, in a remote village in what is now Bangladesh, with its hardships and heartaches, its myths and superstitions. The people, places and cultures that he was a part of have almost entirely disappeared. The temples, mosques and palaces, though gone, come alive again in this beautifully written memoir.
Praise for The Temple Road
“In a time when doublespeak and the colonization of memory prevails, Fazlur Rahman’s memoir, The Temple Road: A Doctor’s Journey, is a refreshing balm of deep and crystalline remembering... Through his vivid and thoughtful prose, we too are allowed to delight and wonder in our own earliest understandings of what it is to be a self, and what it is to be alive and living in the middle of our own powerful story.”
—Tarfia Faizullah, author of Seam
“The Temple Road is the story of a sensitive, gifted and determined young man who overcomes crushing loss, devastating illness, and humble origins to realize his dream to become a physician. His story is the story of countless strivers who, through strength of character, hard work, and the maintenance of core cultural values, find professional success in today’s globalized society... "
—Jerald Winakur, MD, MACP, and author of Memory Lessons: A Doctor’s Story
Illness, Healing, and Hope
No matter where you live, life doesn’t take a break while you are at the clinic. My patients not only had to fight cancer but also cope with their everyday living. They helped me understand a universal need in medical practice: empathy.
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Praise for Our Connected Lives
“With this book, Dr. Rahman joins the ranks of other great physician writers . . . [W]hen the last page is turned, you may wonder where you might find someone like this author to care for you. I know I did.”
—Jerald Winakur, MD, MACP, FRCP
Author of Memory Lessons: A Doctor's Story and Human Voices Wake Us
read the full review
“Fazlur Rahman is a wonderful storyteller. I was immediately drawn in by the vivid characters and touched by their plights and by the author’s depth of compassion.”
—Jonathan Balcombe, bestselling author of What a Fish Knows and Super Fly
Featured Articles
From Chauvinism and Death to Ever-Increasing Hope on Breast Cancer, Newsweek
October is breast cancer awareness month worldwide, a time for reflection on its past, present and future.
A Caring Heart for the Mentally Ill, San Angelo Standard-Times and USA TODAY
When I was a medical student and in training in the 1960s and '70s, cancer and mental illness were discussed in hushed voices, for both had stigmas.
Nurturing Empathy: An Oncologist Looks at Medicine and Himself, The Oncologist
Empathy in medicine matters. I should know—I have been a practicing oncologist for 35 years—but it was only when, in a matter of seconds, I went from doctor to patient that I grasped its true significance.
Lonesome George, R.I.P., New York Times
In a world beset with intractable economic and political problems, why should the death of a tortoise matter? Because his death alerts us to our blindness to the natural world, and because he was known as the rarest creature on earth, the last of his subspecies, and we will never see his kind again.