Cancer is the load built into our genome, the leaden counterweight to our aspirations for immortality – Siddhartha Mukherjee.Coma, Brain, Fever, Outbreak, Vital Signs and Shock? Has anything hit you? Yes, these books have been written by American physician and novelist Robin Cook and most youngsters may be familiar with it. Cook is known for combining medical writing with suspense and his books have made it to New York Times Bestseller List with a sale of 100 million copies. Added to this is another name of apna Indian Siddhartha Mukherjee, an oncologist, who was recently awarded the Guardian First Book Award and Pulitzer Prize in the General Non-fiction category for his ‘biography’ of cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies.

On being bestowed the honour, a modest Mukherjee said that one doesn’t write a book to win awards, but the Guardian Prize was a great and distinct honour. Giving due respect to The Emperor of All Maladies, the judges have recognised the extraordinary courage and resilience of the men and women who struggle with illness, and also those who struggle to treat illnesses, Siddhartha Mukherjee said. He said that he was happy to join the list of writers and scholars such as Zadie Smith, Alexandra Harris, Petina Gappah, Alex Ross to name a few.Describing his book, Siddhartha Mukherjee said it was a mix of history, memoir and biography, of science and personal stories of cancer patients. He said it was an attempt to enter the mind of this immortal illness, to understand its personality, to demystify its behaviour. He says calling his book a biography of cancer means it is something very personal, changing in its form and shape from time-to-time. Those who suffer from cancer don’t know how it has struck them and are sometimes afraid to talk about it. Cancer can strike any part of the body and there is no clear treatment. Mukherjee said that Primo Levi, who wrote Survival in Auschwitz, was his inspiration to write a book. He said that Levi describes himself as a chemist mostly than a writer. He said that at the age of 18, he picked up the book and in one session finished it and went to read Levi’s another masterpiece, The Periodic Table. He said that while writing his book, he referred to Levi’s book to get hold of the tone and talk about small stories through big stories. The author said that for Levi, scientific inquiry was only part of a larger investigation into nature and humans. He added that Levi wrote more as an observer.He said that the idea of writing a book entered  his mind in 2004, when a tumour patient asked him about the disease she was down after a relapse. Many times patients would ask more intricate details about the diseases they were inflicted with, making the author think time and again. To unravel these mysteries with the past, present and future, Siddhartha Mukherjee began his writing journey. Initially it was limited to writing a journal, but looking at the voluminous information on hand, thoughts changed and it began to take the shape of a book, he said. He began writing whenever he found time be it ten minutes or 20 minutes. After penning it, when he sent it to publishers, the responses received were - No one would want to read about cancer. However, Fourth Estate published it and The Emperor of Maladies picked up a Pulitzer Prize at the beginning of the year. After honouring the book, the judges said that the author’s work was an elegant inquiry, clinical and personal, into the long history of a dreaded disease that, despite treatment breakthroughs, still left medical science puzzled.

Speaking on selection of Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies for the 10,000 pounds prize, chair of judges, Lisa Allardice, editor of Guardian Review, said Mukherjee’s anthropomorphism of a disease was a remarkable and unusual achievement. The editor when questioned about making the final choice, she said it was a difficult decision between a first novel and a first book of tremendous research. Both books were incredibly impressive achievements in their own rights, but Mukherjee’s book was felt to be the more original, Allardice said.Showering praises on the author, the editor said that Siddhartha had managed to balance lot of information with lively narratives, combining complicated science with moving human stories. Once you pick up the book it is difficult to keep it down and one is sure to remember the lively facts and anecdotes. The physician has marshalled an immense amount of material into a readable and inspiring story and that the result is a gripping, enlightening read about the nature of illness and our battle against what begins to look like mortality itself, author and academic Sarah Churchwell said on the book on biography of cancer.Other books to compete with The Emperor of All Maladies were Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English, Juan Pablo Villalobos’ Down The Rabbit Hole, Mirza Waheed’s The Collaborator and Amy Waldman’s The Submission.

The Indian origin American physician, who works as an assistant professor of Medicine at Columbia University and a staff cancer physician at Columbia University Medical Center, has himself looked at cancer from close quarters. Both his parents succumbed to the dreaded disease, while his wife, artist Sarah Sze, is receiving radiotherapy for breast cancer. An alumnus of St Columba’s School, Delhi, Siddhartha Mukherjee left India in September 1989 after clearing SAT examinations.The author is a Rhodes Scholar, and graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford and Harvard Medical School. To his credit, he has published articles in Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, The New York Times, and The New Republic. He has also made it to Time magazine’s list of influential people 2011, while his book has made it to the list of top 10 books of 2010 on The Oprah Magazine, the New York Times and figured in Time magazine’s list of top 10 non-fiction books.  Presently, he lives in New York with his wife and two daughters and has already begun work on his second book.