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The Emperor of All Maladies
- Author
- Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Publish Date
- 4 December 2025
- Run Time
- 27 hours 28 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
WINNER OF THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD 2011
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2011
‘Profound, eloquent and searching’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Essential reading’ INDEPENDENT
‘Masterly’ GUARDIAN
‘Extraordinary’ NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, audacious and now more urgent than ever in this vast update, The Emperor of All Maladies is a masterpiece.
The story of cancer is a human one – a tale of chance discoveries, seized opportunities and human endurance. From innovative early surgeries to the Curies’ ultimately tragic work with radiation; from Sidney Farber’s hugely risky discovery of chemotherapy to the author’s treatment of his own patients, The Emperor of All Maladies is a profound and revelatory portrait of an enigmatic disease humans have lived with, and perished from, for more than five thousand years.
In this updated edition of Siddhartha Mukherjee’s instant classic, four new chapters reveal what has changed in the universe of cancer in the years since the book was first published. With moving eloquence, he offers an insight into our evolving understanding of cancer’s causes and the emerging, revolutionary new treatments that might shape its future, including those that Mukherjee himself has helped devise.
‘This elegantly written overview allows us to look a once whispered-about illness squarely in the eye’ INDEPENDENT
‘The notion of "popular science" doesn't come close to describing this achievement. It is literature’ OBSERVER
Critics Review
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Praise for The Emperor of All Maladies:
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‘A riveting book … Profound, eloquent and searching’ Sunday Times
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‘Masterly … at the same time an encyclopedic history of scientific progress against history and a ripping yarn’ Guardian
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‘Siddhartha Mukherjee, an oncologist, has a storyteller’s flair for placing the reader in whichever lab, ward or cellular process he describes, having us feel every clinical breakthrough and failure – and the terror of unchecked cell growth’ Observer, '25 Best Books of the Century So Far'
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‘The book that many will have been waiting for. This elegantly written overview allows us to look a once whispered-about illness squarely in the eye’ Independent
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‘So beautifully written; this is literature, not popular science’ Evening Standard
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‘Powerful and ambitious … One of the most extraordinary stories in medicine’ New York Times Book Review
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‘What a story – full of quixotic characters, therapeutic triumphs and setbacks, and recent historical events – with all the hubris and pathos of Greek tragedy’ Washington Post
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‘It’s hard to think of many books for a general audience that have rendered any area of modern science and technology with such intelligence, accessibility, and compassion’ New Yorker
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‘Mukherjee brings an impressive balance of empathy and dispassion to this instantly essential piece of medical journalism’ Time
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‘Now and then a writer comes along who helps us fathom both the intricacies of a scientific specialty and its human meaning. Lewis Thomas, Sherwin Nuland, and Oliver Sacks come to mind. Add to their company Siddhartha Mukherjee’ Elle
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‘Rich and engrossing … With the perceptiveness and patience of a true scientist, [Mukherjee] begins to weave these individual threads into a coherent and engrossing narrative’ Economist
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‘A meticulously researched, panoramic history … [Mukherjee] imbues decades of painstaking laboratory investigation with the suspense of a mystery novel and urgency of a thriller’ Boston Globe
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Details
- Author
- Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Narrator
- Siddhartha Mukherjee, Fred Sanders
- Duration
- 27 hours 28 minutes
- Release Date
- 4 December 2025
- ISBN
- 9780008816698
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Genre
- Biology, life sciences, Oncology, History of medicine, Medical research, Coping with / advice about cancer, Popular medicine and health, Biography: science, technology and medicine, True stories of heroism, endurance and survival, Medical diagnosis, Medical profession
Synopsis
WINNER OF THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD 2011 WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2011 ‘Profound, eloquent and searching’ SUNDAY TIMES ‘Essential reading’ INDEPENDENT ‘Masterly’ GUARDIAN ‘Extraordinary’ NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Riveting, audacious and now more urgent than ever in this vast update, The Emperor of All Maladies is a masterpiece. The story of cancer is a human one – a tale of chance discoveries, seized opportunities and human endurance. From innovative early surgeries to the Curies’ ultimately tragic work with radiation; from Sidney Farber’s hugely risky discovery of chemotherapy to the author’s treatment of his own patients, The Emperor of All Maladies is a profound and revelatory portrait of an enigmatic disease humans have lived with, and perished from, for more than five thousand years. In this updated edition of Siddhartha Mukherjee’s instant classic, four new chapters reveal what has changed in the universe of cancer in the years since the book was first published. With moving eloquence, he offers an insight into our evolving understanding of cancer’s causes and the emerging, revolutionary new treatments that might shape its future, including those that Mukherjee himself has helped devise. ‘This elegantly written overview allows us to look a once whispered-about illness squarely in the eye’ INDEPENDENT ‘The notion of "popular science" doesn't come close to describing this achievement. It is literature’ OBSERVER
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