The Emperor of All Maladies : A Biography of Cancer (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Non-fiction 2011) Paperback – 29 September 2011

This book is an eye opener, chilling read and brings cancer into a fresh perspective which all of us want to avoid. The phrase out of sight out of mind is dismissed once you read this book. As someone without knowledge of medical science, I found this book easy to understand and follow yet it was one of the most difficult books to sit down and read, primarily due to the intensity of the subject.Many words or adjectives come to mind after reading this book, including detailed, long, very intense, upsetting, disturbing, depressing yet informative. I think the most accurate description would be highly informative. Author has filled the pages with years of experience and his complete knowledge of the subject. Reading this book ensures a better understanding of cancer and how it has affected the journey of medicine in treatment of cancer.From the beginning of the story Author dives into history of cancer and the way it is portrayed as the story goes, it seems more like an actual person and not an illness. More like a super powerful villain who is here for human extinction or advancement of human race. It’s literally do or die situation for human race against cancer.“In writing this book, I started off by imagining my project as a “history” of cancer. But it felt, inescapably, as if I were writing not about something but about someone. My subject daily morphed into something that resembled an individual—an enigmatic, if somewhat deranged, image in a mirror. This was not so much a medical history of an illness, but something more personal, more visceral: its biography.” –Siddhartha MukherjeeAuthor reveals how cancer has been around much longer than we thought by showing examples of exhumed corpses from ancient Egypt and other archeological sites. Once mankind realized how aggressive and fast growing cancer is, the historical treatments were equally zealous and intense with the goal to find a cure and get rid of the cancerous tissue as soon as they can.Cancer is an expansionist disease; it invades through tissues, sets up colonies in hostile landscapes, seeking “sanctuary” in one organ and then immigrating to another. It lives desperately, inventively, fiercely, territorially, cannily, and defensively—at times, as if teaching us how to survive. To confront cancer is to encounter a parallel species, one perhaps more adapted to survival than even we are.―Siddhartha MukherjeeThe emperor of Maladies – the title captures ones interest and this no doubt has proven to a book which sticks with you even after you finish reading it. To conclude, the book sheds new light on the future of war on cancer, Medicine and science has come a long way in the past decades and new treatments continue to be discovered and tested. The war on cancer is far from over, however based on the knowledge from this history; we surely are equipped to face it head on."We are so close to a cure for cancer. We lack only the will and the kind of money and comprehensive planning that went into putting a man on the moon" -Dr. Sidney Farber

I guess I am out of words to express my opinion about the book. I highly doubt any other book can be written on Cancer with such captivating explanation. From the moment I started reading this book I couldn't put it down. Such brilliant is the storytelling that it binds you to the theme of the book.I read this book after reading Siddharth Mukherjee second book "The Gene - An Intimate History". These two books have had profound impact on my understanding of human biology. The author has taken us on a journey to let us know the experiments, struggles, disappointments, fights and eventual victories on many front of human biology.This book deals with cancer. As the title of the book is aptly given, this indeed is "Biography of Cancer". The books tells the story of cancer from the very first written record of the disease to the latest advancements made in the field of cancer to better understand it and to find a permanent cure for it.Why cancer still remains an elusive disease ? Why despite knowing so much about human genome we cannot find a cure for cancer ?Will we actually be able to find a permanent cure? Or cancer will always remain one step ahead of us ? The book delves with these issues and tells the story of cancer which at times is complex, confusing and terrifying and at other times is intriguing, fascinating and beautiful.

My first introduction to the dreaded disease of cancer was through movies, where the hero bleeds through his nose, wraps a shawl and goes around with unshaven face, singing sad songs about his plight. My mother’s narrations about her elder sister’s traumatic experience with breast cancer and resultant mastectomy at a young age didn’t make much of an impact on me. As I grew up, there were so many characters with cancer in so many movies that the word cancer itself started to feel like those foreign locations that the lead characters go to for their duets – exotic, intriguing, yet faraway, having nothing to do with me. But as I matured into adulthood, I started seeing relatives, families of friends and colleagues bear the brunt of this ominous disease. My brief volunteering with an NGO that works for cancer patients brought me face to face with the seriousness of this scourge of humans. Young children suffering from leukemia, men in their early twenties fighting lung cancer caused by smoking, elderly people disfigured by throat cancer due to tobacco use - cancer was no longer exotic and faraway. It was close and gross.When recently someone near and dear was diagnosed with cancer, I felt my curiosity piqued. I was looking for resources to learn more about this disease and do what I can to spread awareness. That’s how I found this book. And, what a worthy primer this turned out to be!Cancer is not a modern illness. Its ancientness parallels that of our own. For millennia, people have suffered from and succumbed to cancer. But what makes this dreaded disease unique is its ability to evolve at the same rate as we do. Every time we find a cure and hope to kill this disease forever, cancer evolves and moves the bull’s eye. To borrow an idea from the author, imagine an Achilles whose vulnerability shifts someplace else, just as you target an arrow at his heel.All those centuries of painstaking research has taught us one thing – this disease emerges from within. While external agents – like viruses and carcinogens - play a crucial role in waking this demon from its slumber, cancer is something internalized. It is our own body cells gone rogue, disobeying the lifecycle of birth-growth-decline. In a cruel twist of fate, our own body cells, nano-representations of our own selves, find a mutated vigor for ‘life’, start proliferating so profusely that they end up killing us, their collective image. Killing a harmful virus or bacteria has been relatively easier, because they have definite shape, purpose and, especially, are apart from us. But cancer is a part of us, our own cells, our genes, DNAs gone rogue. Not just that. Each of these mutations takes its own unique form as there are individuals. Cancer isn’t one single disease to find a cure against. It is a bunch of mutations, the perverted race of cells to proliferate and spread all over.This book taught me those things in an intense way. Starting from the earliest mentions of this disease in history, nearly 2500 years ago, to the latest development in the field of oncology, this book tries to light up a very vast area. And, it succeeds too. The tug of war between cancer and science, the misunderstandings, poorly designed treatments, lessons learnt, sacrifices by patients as well as physicians, their tenacity in the face of adversity, emotional / physical reliefs brought by discovery of cures, relapses and remissions, egos and ebullience of the people involved, this book tells it all. If you are looking to learn what cancer is and what a devastating trail it has left all through the annals of mankind, then this is a book you must start with. The sheer effort and research that fills these pages is astounding. Dr. Mukherjee has put his heart and soul into this book.The book is comprehensive but not complete though. For example, the book doesn’t dwell into ovarian cancer, something that I was so keen to learn about. The book doesn’t provide any advice on how to prevent cancer, if at all it is possible, or what kinds of lifestyles are prone to the risk of it. But, of course, the good doctor promptly justifies his reasons in the annexures.This book doesn’t tell you everything that you would like to know about cancer. But it will tell you all the basics that you need to know about it. If you are pursuing the subject with curiosity, this is a good book to begin with. Not an easy read, but definitely worth the time.As I finished reading and sat staring at the covers, I had this strange emotion – in their traits of reproducing profusely, migrating to wherever possible, reshaping the landscape of their destination (organ), and increasing ability to defy death that results in the ultimate demise of the host organism, isn’t cancer quite akin to us humans? Are cancer cells the microcosmic parallels to what we humans are to the macrocosm, i.e., the Universe?!Who knows?! May be, we are!

One of the best ever books available on cancer. Excellent collection of facts combined with a stunning display of story telling makes even a dull subject like cancer into an exhilarating one. Is cancer really a disease ? The answer lies in the book 😉