Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons, has won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for his book, "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer," published in November of last year, it was announced by the Pulitzer Prize Committee April 18. After Jhumpa Lahiri, he is the 2nd bengali to receive the prestigious prize.
The Pulitzer award citation described 'The Emperor of All Maladies', published by Harpercollins India, 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.' Siddhartha Mukherjee received ten thousand dollars as prize money.
The critically acclaimed book has been described as a 'literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist.' The Book beat other finalists in this category which included 'The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brain' by Nicholas Carr and 'Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and 'The Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History' by S C Gwynne.
"I feel incredible," Mukherjee said in a press release on the day of the announcement. “I was actually in a bookstore when I received the e-mail. There’s been no phone call yet. It’s life-changing for me, and among the people I need to thank are the patients themselves. That’s one of the things I tried to do in the book is honor their stories and give them a voice.” Mukherjee, who joined the P&S faculty in 2009, was interviewed by P&S at the time of the book's release and was asked how, since “biography” is an interesting word choice in relation to cancer, did “biography” emerge as opposed to “history?” “As I was writing and becoming more immersed in this story of cancer, it really felt as if the word ‘history’ was too generic; it didn’t convey the visceral way that cancer becomes part of our lives, particularly in the late 20th century. So I began to search for another description,” he replied.
“When one writes about illness, about the history of disease, we are, in some ways, writing a biography.”
The book was written so that everyone could understand cancer.
“I made a very conscious attempt to bring the readers up to date on the most current discoveries in cancer biology and cancer medicine. It was a challenge: How does one bring an audience up to that moment which has, seemingly, become so esoteric? It simply cannot be esoteric,” Mukherjee explained.
“If you (the layperson) and I can’t have a conversation about one of the most important scientific and intellectual moments in our history, then something is wrong and we need to figure out a way to have that conversation.”
With all that he has learned up to this point, Mukherjee remains hopeful in terms of cancer research and possible cures. “I feel pathologically hopeful! The opposite of hopeful is hopeless. How can you be hopeless? Discoveries have occurred, and discoveries are occurring. Look at the history. Does that mean that every move becomes the most brilliant discovery or the universal cure for cancer? No. But history clearly shows a track record of progress,” he said.
“I often tell fellows and residents, to me there is no discipline we practice as human beings that manages this level of complexity. Not just statistical or scientific complexity, but emotional complexity. That’s what makes it one of the most unbelievably moving professions that exist.”
Mukherjee MD, PhD, is a cancer physician and researcher. He is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and a cancer physician at the CU/NYU Presbyterian Hospital.
A Rhodes Scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford, and from Harvard Medical School and was a Fellow at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and an attending physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
He has published articles in Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Neuron, The Journal of Clinical Investigation, The New York Times and The New Republic.
He lives in New York with his wife and daughter.
The Pulitzer Prize is a US award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by Hungarian-American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City.
