Emperor of All Maladies

Siddhartha Mukherjee is the author of The Song of the Cell, The Gene: An Intimate History and The Laws of Medicine. He is an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University and a cancer physician and researcher. A Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, the University of Oxford and Harvard Medical School. In 2023, he was elected as a new member of the National Academy of Medicine. His work has been published in Nature, the New England Journal of Medicine, Cell, the New York Times Magazine and the New Yorker, among others.

Praise for The Emperor of All Maladies: ‘A riveting book … Profound, eloquent and searching’ Sunday Times‘Masterly … at the same time an encyclopedic history of scientific progress against history and a ripping yarn’ Guardian‘The notion of "popular science" doesn't come close to describing this achievement. It is literature’ Observer‘The book that many will have been waiting for. This elegantly written overview allows us to look a once whispered-about illness squarely in the eye’ Independent‘So beautifully written; this is literature, not popular science’ Evening Standard‘Mukherjee never condescends, yet he manages to write lucidly and tellingly about complex experimental, technological and theoretical matters’ Will Self, New Statesman‘Powerful and ambitious … One of the most extraordinary stories in medicine’ New York Times Book Review ‘What a story – full of quixotic characters, therapeutic triumphs and setbacks, and recent historical events – with all the hubris and pathos of Greek tragedy’ Washington Post‘It’s hard to think of many books for a general audience that have rendered any area of modern science and technology with such intelligence, accessibility, and compassion’ New Yorker ‘Mukherjee brings an impressive balance of empathy and dispassion to this instantly essential piece of medical journalism’ Time‘Now and then a writer comes along who helps us fathom both the intricacies of a scientific specialty and its human meaning. Lewis Thomas, Sherwin Nuland, and Oliver Sacks come to mind. Add to their company Siddhartha Mukherjee’ Elle ‘Rich and engrossing … With the perceptiveness and patience of a true scientist, [Mukherjee] begins to weave these individual threads into a coherent and engrossing narrative’ Economist‘A meticulously researched, panoramic history … [Mukherjee] imbues decades of painstaking laboratory investigation with the suspense of a mystery novel and urgency of a thriller’ Boston Globe