From my very childhood this word 'cancer' used to haunt me. I remember people being shocked the moment they learn that someone's having cancer and this made me feel it's some kind of monster. yes. It surely is a monster which engulfs one from within .
As a science student I am very intrigued to know what this deadly monster( cancer) is all about. obviously in this google-in-your-mouth era I quickly reach out google and type the word cancer, while I was going through many sites, blogs and pages I read about this book ,"emperor of all maladies" ,with a tagline 'A biography of cancer'.Tagline sounded witty ,cool and alluring. Till date I didn't know that one could actually write a biography of a lethal disease.I googled about the author 'Siddhartha Mukherjee', found a video titled 'Siddhartha mukherjee-the cancer puzzle'.
Somewhere in his speech he says this. "when press asks Edmund hillary about why he has climbed mount everest, he says that I climbed it because it was there. And now if you people ask me why I wrote this book,I would say that I wrote it because there is no such book". Listening to that witty statement ,I was awestruck with my mouth wide open and this was enough to just grab this book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher. He is assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and the CU/NYU presbyterian Hospital. A Rhodes scholar,He graduated from Stanford University ,University of Oxford and Harvard Medical School.
reading through the book , I noticed one thing which is totally unique about the author. It surely is a Non-Fiction but reading through the book I actually didn't feel like reading a NF, infact the book is a concoction of stories ,anecdotes, analogies all entwined around Cancer. And the narrative is out of box.I still don't fathom how a cancer physician could write such artistically.And as this book is a biography of Cancer it need not be restricted to medical students. It has history , science and creative writing and can be read by any one .
A biography of cancer: As the book is all about Cancer ,everyone must be thinking that Cancer is the protagonist ,Ironically it is not. Sydney farder, the person who has worked hard and carried out a lot of research in treating child leukemia is the one of the main protagonists. Next comes Mary lasker , who has created a stir in collecting the funds required to carry out the research into curing cancer and many others like Yella Pregada Subbarao, Ehrlich,Min Chi Li,Thomas Hodgkin,Rontgen,Marie and pierre curie and many other have contributed in finding a cure for cancer. 
This is the the cancer institute named after Farber at massachusetts ,Boston.
As every story has an end ,Even 'Cancer' should have an End and we hope that 'Cancer' soon dies a brutal death in the coming future.
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