ANOTHER CAP FOR BENGALIS

SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE BAGS PULITZER PRIZE 2011

Bengali doctor Siddhartha Mukherjee's book on cancer "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography on Cancer" bags prestigious 2011 Pulitzer Prize.

Mukherjee's book "The Emperor of All Maladies" revolves around history of the diseases and how the war has been fought by the doctors since time immoral. A profoundly human biography on cancer has been presented by Dr Mukherjee which had its first documented appearance thousand years ago.

The Pulitzer in the general non-fiction category accompanies $10,000. The Pulitzer award citation described The Emperor of All Maladies as "an elegant inquiry, at once clinical and personal, into the long history of an insidious disease that, despite treatment breakthroughs, still bedevils medical science".

Dr Mukherjee was born in New Delhi. He went to school at St. Columba's School. He has been declared a Rhodes Scholar by University of Oxford which is world's most prestigious scholarship. He majored in biology from Stanford University and gratuated from Harvard Medical School. He is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and a staff cancer physician at Columbia University Medical Centre. He has written articles for The New England Journal of Medicine, The New York Times and The Republic.

The critically-acclaimed book has been described as a "literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist". The book provides an in depth study into the world of cancer and the various treatments.

According to information about the book on the Pulitzer website the book talks about treatments ranging from the Persian Queen Atossa whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the 19th-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee's own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease.

The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. 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. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist.

From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive—and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease.

Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.

(Courtesy : The Pulitzar Prizes)