Siddhartha Mukherjee, the Indian origin American physician who won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, has added another literary accolade by winning the Guardian First Book Award for his “biography” of cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies. The book, which traces the disease from the first recorded mastectomy in 500BC to today’s cutting edge research, was the only non-fiction title on the shortlist, and beat four novels for the award worth 10,000 pounds. The chair of judges, Lisa Allardice, editor of Guardian Review, said Dr. Mukherjee’s “anthropomorphism of a disease” was a “remarkable and unusual achievement.” Dr. Mukherjee is assistant professor of Medicine at Columbia University.
The other four books on the shortlist were: Pigeon English (Stephen Kelman), Down The Rabbit Hole, (Juan Pablo Villalobos), The Collaborator (Mirza Waheed) and The Submission (Amy Waldman).
Author and academic Sarah Churchwell — who joined Ms. Allardice on the judging panel for the Guardian award along with the authors David Nicholls and Antonia Fraser, Stuart Broom of Waterstone’s and the Guardian’s deputy editor Katharine Viner — said Mukherjee had “marshalled an immense amount of material into a readable and inspiring story” and that the result is “a gripping, enlightening read about the nature of illness and our battle against what begins to look like mortality itself.”
Dr. Mukherjee, who is writing a second book, said it was “a great and distinct honour” to win the Guardian prize.
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