The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Cancer has shadowed human existence for over five millennia, yet it remains stubbornly difficult to pin down. Siddhartha Mukherjee treats it here not as a cold clinical subject but as a living story, one populated by desperate patients, obsessive scientists, and the occasional stroke of accidental genius. From the earliest, brutal surgical interventions to the Curies' haunting experiments with radiation, from Sidney Farber's audacious and risky steps towards chemotherapy to Mukherjee's own experiences treating patients, this is a book that puts human beings at the very centre of a long and unfinished war. It's medical history written with the urgency of a novel. This updated edition adds four new chapters that bring the conversation forward, examining what has shifted in our understanding of the disease since the book's original publication. Mukherjee writes with quiet, precise eloquence about how scientists now think about cancer's origins, and about the promising new treatments, some of which he has personally helped to develop, that may one day change outcomes for millions. What makes this book so affecting is its refusal to flatten the subject into triumph or despair. Instead, it holds both at once, giving readers something rare: a portrait of science as it actually happens, messy, brilliant, and deeply human.
- Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Publisher: HarperCollins India
- Genre: Industry-Specific Business
- ISBN: 978-9365699562
- Pages: 720 pages