The Emperor of All Maladies

By: Siddhartha Mukherjee

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

A comprehensive history of cancer – one of the greatest enemies of medical progress – and an insight into its effects and potential cures, by a leading expert on the illness.

In The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee, doctor, researcher and award-winning science writer, 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, arrogance and misperception, all leveraged against a disease that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out ‘war against cancer’. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories and deaths, told through the eyes of predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary.

From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteeth-century recipient of primitive radiation and chemotherapy and Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through toxic, bruising, and draining regimes to survive and to increase the store of human knowledge.

Riveting and magesterial, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments and a brilliant new perspective on the way doctors, scientists, philosophers and lay people have observed and understood the human body for millennia.

©2011 HarperCollins Publishers Limited (P)2011 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Fantastic exiting scientific story telling

Would you consider the audio edition of The Emperor of All Maladies to be better than the print version?

Possibly but I think both versions has value. I use the audioversion in my car spending 2 hours on tranport from home to work. Some of the more philosofistic quotes i would like to read and grasp by seeing the text not meerely hearing the words.

What did you like best about this story?

The story about cancer is told in a very passionate way building drama in the story so you cannot wait to hear the end of that drama. The scientific data is transformed to personalized stories that we can identify us with. Very exiting and well told stories that hold the red thread.

Which character – as performed by Stephen Hoye – was your favorite?

All characters were well perfomed and escribed as collaborate workers in the scioentific community. The story of the cancer mascot Jimmy and the raise of the Jimmy foundation was very well described.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Many chapters moved me - the efforts and strengh in these deeply commited doctors and workers in the battlefield against cancer. The way of thinking and the changes in the way of thinking.
So many people took a stand so many used their lives in the battle against diseases - so very well written and told.

Any additional comments?

I am not native english spoken but live in Denmark as a medical oncologist.I can so closely identify the struggle described in the book. The struggle against cancer described as almost happened in my time born in 1951 as a senior concultant stating treating cancer in 1982.
Stephen Hoye's reading is so clear and well understood that I have no problems at all listening to the book - it might as well have beeen read in my own language. Emazingly well done.