Key themes
- Cancer as a biological adversary — and as a cultural and social force
- The history of medicine as the history of overconfidence and adjustment
- What we owe those who died for the knowledge we now have
About this book
A 'biography' of cancer across centuries of struggle to understand it; a Pulitzer-winning epic of medicine.
Published in 2010, The Emperor of All Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the Guardian First Book Award. Mukherjee was a cancer physician and researcher who spent years on the project, writing at night after hospital shifts.
Discussion questions
- Mukherjee calls the book 'a biography of cancer.' What does this personification achieve — and what risks does it carry?
- The history of cancer treatment is partly a history of patient advocates forcing change on a resistant medical establishment. What is Mukherjee saying about the relationship between patients and the institutions that treat them?
- The surgical era — radical mastectomies, disfiguring operations performed with certainty that proved wrong — is one of the most disturbing passages. What lessons does Mukherjee draw about medical certainty?
- The book ends with cautious hope about targeted therapies. How does Mukherjee balance honesty about uncertainty with the need to offer some trajectory toward hope?
- The Emperor of All Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. What does it do that a medical textbook or pure science journalism cannot?
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