How many people will be interested in reading a 592-page book on a dreaded disease by a first-time author? Scribner is placing a 125,000-copy bet on a “biography of cancer,” The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, arriving next week.

The author and the book are profiled today in the New York Times. Mukherjee explains why he wrote the book,

“I was having a conversation with a patient who had stomach cancer and she said, ‘I’m willing to go on fighting, but I need to know what it is that I’m battling.’ It was an embarrassing moment. I couldn’t answer her, and I couldn’t point her to a book that would. Answering her question — that was the urgency that drove me, really. The book was written because it wasn’t there.”

For a sample, read Mukherjee’s article in the Oct. 31 New York Times Magazine (“The Cancer Sleeper Cell“), which is based on the book.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer Siddhartha Mukherjee Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: 592 pages Publisher: Scribner – (2010-11-16) ISBN / EAN: 1439107955 / 9781439107959

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 at 8:31 am and is filed under 2010 - Fall, Nonfiction, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.