I chose this book on the recommendation of other reviewers but also because I decided I needed to make some sense of the vast body of information and mis-information about this disease. However, as the book is full of scientific details to process, I personally would have found paper version easier to follow than audio version, although the narration was excellent and very clear.

One of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. His use of language is makes it a real literary pleasure to read, even though the material is at times very complex (and on occasions little difficult to follow, especially the latter part), and the structure of the book is incredibly well thought-through, joining personal touch, with scientific information and philosophical reflections. The author has conducted an impressive research into the topic, and his book is full of fascinating details, both scientific as well as personal touches. It traces a journey of long standing human effort to battle one of the most devastating diseases - cancer - the struggles encountered, unexpected finds as well as hard won victories. This is a remarkable book - original, full of humanity, incredibly educational and very interesting. Riveting and magisterial, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments and a brilliant new perspective on the way doctors, scientists, philosophers and lay people have observed and understood the human body for millennia. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories and deaths, told through the eyes of predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary.įrom the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipient of primitive radiation and chemotherapy and Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through toxic, bruising, and draining regimes to survive and to increase the store of human knowledge. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience and perseverance, but also of hubris, arrogance and misperception, all leveraged against a disease that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out ‘war against cancer’. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with - and perished from - for more than five thousand years. In The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee, doctor, researcher and award-winning science writer, examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. Winner of the Guardian First Book Award 2011Ī comprehensive history of cancer – one of the greatest enemies of medical progress – and an insight into its effects and potential cures, by a leading expert on the illness.

The emperor of all diseases