Indian-American's book on cancer on NYT bestsellers' list

The book figures 12th in the hard cover non-fiction category with rankings reflecting sales for the week ended Nov 21.

New Delhi born Mukherjee's "powerful and ambitious first book" as the Times said in a recent review tells "one of the most extraordinary stories in medicine: a history of cancer, which will kill about 600,000 Americans by the end of this year, and more than seven million people around the planet."

"He frames it as a biography, 'an attempt to enter the mind of this immortal illness, to understand its personality, to demystify its behavior.' It is an epic story that he seems compelled to tell, the way a passionate young priest might attempt a biography of Satan," the US daily said

Mukherjee started on the road to this book when he began advanced training in cancer medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston in the summer of 2003. The Times describes "The Emperor of All Maladies" as a history of eureka moments and decades of despair.  "Mukherjee stitches stories of his own patients into this history, not always smoothly. But they are very strong, well-written and unsparing of himself," the reviewer said.