The Emperor of All Maladies By Siddhartha Mukherjee

A Definitive, Expanded Edition

Pulitzer Prize–winning Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies returns in an updated edition, offering fresh insights into the latest advances in cancer research and treatment. With four new chapters, Mukherjee—physician, oncologist, and acclaimed author—guides readers through the dramatic scientific and clinical progress of recent years, blending expert knowledge with deeply human storytelling. This expanded edition not only charts the evolving fight against cancer but also highlights the innovations shaping its future.

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.

Siddharth Mukherjee writes in The Emperor of All Maladies:

‘It was in the time of Hippocrates, around 400 BC, that a word for can-cer first appeared in the medical literature: karkinos, from the Greek word for “crab.” The tumor, with its clutch of swollen blood vessels around it, reminded Hippocrates of a crab dug in the sand with its legs spread in a circle. The image was peculiar (few cancers truly resemble crabs), but also vivid. Later writers, both doctors and patients, added embellishments. For some, the hardened, matted surface of the tumor was reminiscent of the tough carapace of a crab’s body. Others felt a crab moving under the flesh as the disease spread stealthily throughout the body. For yet others, the sudden stab of pain produced by the disease was like being caught in the grip of a crab’s pincers.’

Udayan Mitra, Executive Publisher HarperCollins India says, ‘We at HarperCollins are delighted to be able to bring to readers Siddhartha Mukherjee’s classic work The Emperor of All Maladies, in a revised and expanded new edition. We hope very much that readers in India will want to engage with this bestselling and award-winning book afresh – it remains as relevant, informative and gripping as it was when it was first published fifteen years ago.’

About The Author

Siddhartha Mukherjee is a physician, researcher, and acclaimed author of The Emperor of All Maladies, The Laws of Medicine, The Gene, and The Song of the Cell. An associate professor of medicine at Columbia University, he has published widely in Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, Cell, and The New Yorker. He lives in New York with his wife and daughters.

Visit SiddharthaMukherjee.com for more information.

15 Years On: Pulitzer-Winning Bestseller, Now Updated & Expanded
Available from 6 February 2026 wherever books are sold | Published by HarperCollins
Non-Fiction | With over 100 pages of new material

Hardback | 720 pp | INR 1499

Paperback | 720 pp | INR 999