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Tag: Award winner

  • The Emperor of All Maladies

    The Emperor of All Maladies, published in 2010, is subtitled A Biography of Cancer. Siddhartha Mukherjee, an oncologist, began writing it during his fellowship training, prompted by a patient who wanted to know what she was fighting. The book tells the story of the disease and of human attempts to understand and treat it.

    Mukherjee travels from an Egyptian physician's account of a breast tumour and the theories of Hippocrates and Galen to the radical mastectomies of William Halsted, the first childhood leukaemia remissions achieved by Sidney Farber with chemotherapy, the lobbying by Mary Lasker that led to the American war on cancer, the long fight to link smoking with lung cancer, and the discovery of oncogenes that led to targeted drugs such as Gleevec and Herceptin.

    Woven among these histories are the stories of his own patients, which keep the human stakes in view. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2011 and was adapted into a documentary series. It is notable for explaining complex biology clearly while conveying both the progress and the humility the disease demands.

    Book details

    AuthorSiddhartha Mukherjee
    First published2010
    Original languageEnglish
    GenrePopular science
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)570
    AwardsPulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction 2011

    Themes

    • History of medicine
    • Cancer research
    • Patient experience
    • Chemotherapy and targeted therapy
    • Public health and tobacco

    Who should read it

    Patients, families, medical students and anyone wanting to understand cancer's history and science.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Gene: An Intimate History
    • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
    • Being Mortal

  • Cosmos

    Cosmos, published in 1980 alongside the PBS television series of the same name, takes readers on a journey from the edge of the observable universe to the inside of a living cell. Carl Sagan, an astronomer and planetary scientist, weaves together astronomy, biology, chemistry and history in thirteen chapters that mirror the episodes.

    Topics include the origin of the elements in stars, the evolution of life on Earth, the exploration of Mars and the outer planets by robotic probes, the possibility of extraterrestrial civilisations and the scale of space and time. Sagan also tells the stories of scientists such as Eratosthenes, Kepler, Huygens and Einstein, and laments the destruction of the Library of Alexandria as a symbol of lost knowledge.

    His writing is lyrical, humane and urgent, combining wonder with warnings about nuclear war and environmental damage, and with a passionate defence of scientific thinking. The book became one of the best-selling science books ever published in English and won a Hugo Award, and it continues to inspire people to study science.

    Book details

    AuthorCarl Sagan
    First published1980
    Original languageEnglish
    GenrePopular science
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)370
    AwardsHugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book 1981

    Themes

    • Scale of the universe
    • History of science
    • Origin of life
    • Search for extraterrestrial life
    • Scientific thinking

    Who should read it

    Anyone of any age who wants to feel the wonder of the universe and the human story of discovering it.

    If you liked this, try

    • A Brief History of Time
    • Pale Blue Dot
    • Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

  • Guns, Germs, and Steel

    Guns, Germs, and Steel, published in 1997, starts from a question Jared Diamond says a New Guinean politician named Yali put to him: why did Europeans arrive with so much cargo while New Guineans had so little? Diamond sets out to explain why Eurasian societies, rather than those of the Americas, Africa or Australia, ended up conquering much of the world.

    His answer lies in environment rather than biology. Regions such as the Fertile Crescent happened to have wild plants and large animals suitable for domestication, which allowed food surpluses, dense populations, specialists, states and writing. Eurasia's east-west axis let crops and technology spread across similar climates, and living close to livestock bred diseases that later devastated peoples with no immunity, as in the Spanish conquest of the Incas.

    The book won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and became one of the most influential works of popular history. Historians and anthropologists have criticised it for environmental determinism and for underplaying human choices and colonial politics. Even so, it reframed how a generation of readers think about inequality between societies.

    Book details

    AuthorJared Diamond
    First published1997
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistory
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)480
    AwardsPulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction 1998

    Themes

    • Geographic determinism
    • Domestication of plants and animals
    • Epidemic disease
    • Conquest
    • Inequality between societies

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a bold, evidence-packed explanation of why world history unfolded so unequally.

    If you liked this, try

    • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
    • Collapse
    • 1491

  • City of Djinns

    City of Djinns, published in 1993, records a year that the young William Dalrymple spent living in Delhi with his wife, the artist Olivia Fraser. They rent rooms from the formidable Mrs Puri, a Punjabi refugee who rebuilt her family's fortunes after Partition, and ride around with a taxi driver, Balvinder Singh, whose opinions enliven many chapters.

    Dalrymple's method is to travel backwards in time. He talks to survivors of 1947 and of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, explores the remnants of British New Delhi and of the Mughal capital, visits Sufi shrines, eunuch communities and fading Anglo-Indian families, and finally searches for traces of the Delhi associated with the Mahabharata. The djinns of the title are the spirits believed to haunt the ruined city.

    Part travel book, part history and part comic memoir, it is full of affectionate portraits and eccentric encounters. It won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and established Dalrymple's reputation, and it remains one of the most popular introductions to the many cities layered within Delhi.

    Book details

    AuthorWilliam Dalrymple
    First published1993
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreTravel
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)340
    SettingDelhi, late 1980s, with excursions into its history
    AwardsThomas Cook Travel Book Award 1994

    Themes

    • Layers of history
    • Partition memory
    • Sufi and Mughal Delhi
    • Eccentric characters
    • Urban change

    Who should read it

    Travellers and armchair historians who want a witty, personal guide to Delhi's past and present.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Last Mughal
    • Delhi: A Novel
    • Twilight in Delhi

  • The Last Mughal

    The Last Mughal, published in 2006, follows Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the elderly Mughal emperor whose authority barely extended beyond the walls of the Red Fort, and the Delhi he presided over: a city of poets, Sufi mystics, calligraphers and courtly ritual living uneasily alongside the growing power of the East India Company.

    When sepoys from Meerut rebelled in May 1857 and rode to Delhi, they made Zafar the reluctant figurehead of the uprising. Dalrymple uses Persian and Urdu documents from the National Archives, many never before used, to show the siege from inside the city: the chaos, the shortages, the quarrels among rebel commanders, and the views of ordinary residents. He also follows the British besiegers and their brutal retribution.

    The book argues that the uprising was also widely understood as a religious war, and that its suppression ended a composite Indo-Islamic culture in Delhi. Rich in detail and vividly written, it won the Duff Cooper Prize. It reads as both a gripping narrative and an elegy for the poet Ghalib's world.

    Book details

    AuthorWilliam Dalrymple
    First published2006
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistory
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)580
    SettingDelhi, mainly 1857
    AwardsDuff Cooper Prize

    Themes

    • 1857 uprising
    • End of the Mughal dynasty
    • Colonial violence
    • Delhi's composite culture
    • Religion and rebellion

    Who should read it

    History lovers who want an immersive, archive-rich account of 1857 seen from inside Delhi.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Anarchy
    • City of Djinns
    • White Mughals

  • An Era of Darkness

    An Era of Darkness grew out of a 2015 Oxford Union debate in which Shashi Tharoor argued that Britain owes reparations to its former colonies. His speech went viral, and the book, published in India in 2016 and in Britain as Inglorious Empire in 2017, sets out the case in detail.

    Tharoor attacks the notion that British rule was a net benefit. He argues that India's share of world manufacturing collapsed as its textile industries were destroyed, that railways and administration were built primarily to serve British interests, that famines were worsened by policy, and that divide-and-rule politics hardened religious and caste divisions that culminated in Partition. Chapters also take on claims about democracy, the rule of law, the English language and tea and cricket as colonial legacies.

    The book is written with Tharoor's trademark eloquence and relish for argument, drawing on the work of earlier nationalist economists and modern historians. Critics note that it is advocacy rather than balanced scholarship, but it has been widely read as a rebuttal to imperial nostalgia. It won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2019.

    Book details

    AuthorShashi Tharoor
    First published2016
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistory
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)330
    SettingIndia under the East India Company and the British Raj, 1757-1947
    AwardsSahitya Akademi Award 2019

    Themes

    • Colonial exploitation
    • Economic drain
    • Divide and rule
    • Imperial myths
    • Reparations

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a forceful, accessible counter-argument to the idea that the British Empire was good for India.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Anarchy
    • The Last Mughal
    • Late Victorian Holocausts

  • India After Gandhi

    Published in 2007, India After Gandhi tells the story of the world's largest democracy from 1947 onwards. Ramachandra Guha begins with the trauma of Partition, the integration of the princely states and the framing of the Constitution, and asks how a country so poor, divided and diverse managed to stay united and democratic when many observers predicted collapse.

    The narrative covers the Nehru years, linguistic reorganisation of states, wars with China and Pakistan, Indira Gandhi's rise, the Emergency, insurgencies in Punjab, Kashmir and the Northeast, the Mandal and Mandir upheavals, and economic liberalisation. Guha weaves in social movements, popular culture and cricket, and gives voice to dissenters and regional figures as well as prime ministers.

    Written for general readers and grounded in archival research, the book combines narrative energy with balanced judgement, and it quickly became the standard single-volume history of modern India. It won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2011 and has been revised in later editions to extend the story. It is long but highly readable.

    Book details

    AuthorRamachandra Guha
    First published2007
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistory
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)900
    SettingIndia from 1947 to the early twenty-first century
    AwardsSahitya Akademi Award 2011

    Themes

    • Democracy
    • National unity
    • Partition and integration
    • Political leadership
    • Social movements

    Who should read it

    Anyone who wants one authoritative, engaging book on how independent India came to be what it is.

    If you liked this, try

    • Freedom at Midnight
    • The Discovery of India
    • Gandhi Before India

  • Tamas

    Tamas, meaning darkness, opens in a town in the Rawalpindi district in the months before Partition. Nathu, a poor tanner, is paid to kill a pig for what he is told is a veterinary purpose. The carcass is left at a mosque, and within days the district is consumed by fear, rumour and killing between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims.

    Sahni moves among many characters rather than following one hero: Congress volunteers trying to keep peace, young men trained for militancy by communal organisations, a British deputy commissioner who could intervene but prefers administrative caution, Sikh villagers preparing to defend a gurdwara, and refugees in camps. Nathu's guilt and bewilderment give the book its moral centre.

    Drawing on his own memories of riots in Rawalpindi, Sahni wrote in plain, restrained prose that makes the violence more disturbing. The novel won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1975, and Govind Nihalani's 1988 television adaptation provoked national debate. Sahni's own English translation is the best known, and the book remains essential reading on how communal hatred is manufactured.

    Book details

    AuthorBhisham Sahni
    First published1974
    Original languageHindi
    Translated byBhisham Sahni
    GenreHistorical fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)350
    SettingA town and villages in Rawalpindi district, Punjab, early 1947
    AwardsSahitya Akademi Award 1975

    Themes

    • Communal violence
    • Partition
    • Manipulation by elites
    • Colonial indifference
    • Guilt

    Who should read it

    Readers who want to understand how Partition riots were provoked and spread, told without sensationalism.

    If you liked this, try

    • Train to Pakistan
    • Pinjar
    • Aadha Gaon

  • Raag Darbari

    Ranganath, a history postgraduate, comes from the city to recover his health in Shivpalganj, a village in Uttar Pradesh where his uncle Vaidyaji lives. Vaidyaji is an Ayurvedic physician in name, but his real practice is power: he controls the village college, the cooperative society and, through allies, the panchayat. Ranganath's idealism wilts as he watches how things actually get done.

    The novel follows a parade of characters: Vaidyaji's sons, the strongman Badri and the swaggering student leader Ruppan, the hanger-on Sanichar who is installed as a puppet village head, the harried principal and squabbling teachers, the police, the clerks and the litigants who spend their lives in court. Every institution of the new republic is shown being bent to faction and self-interest.

    Published in 1968 and awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1970, the book is wickedly funny line by line, with an irony that never lets up. It has been read as the definitive portrait of rural India's political culture, and much of it still feels current. Gillian Wright translated it into English, and a television serial was made in the 1980s.

    Book details

    AuthorShrilal Shukla
    First published1968
    Original languageHindi
    Translated byGillian Wright
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)340
    SettingShivpalganj, a village in Uttar Pradesh, 1960s
    AwardsSahitya Akademi Award 1970

    Themes

    • Corruption
    • Rural politics
    • Decay of institutions
    • Education system
    • Disillusionment

    Who should read it

    Anyone who wants to understand, and laugh bitterly at, how power works in small-town India.

    If you liked this, try

    • Batatyachi Chaal
    • Aadha Gaon
    • Godaan

  • Yayati

    In the ancient story, King Yayati is cursed with premature old age and persuades his youngest son to exchange youth with him so he can go on enjoying pleasure. Khandekar's novel, published in 1959, builds a full psychological drama around that legend. Yayati himself narrates much of it, alongside Devayani, the proud daughter of the sage Shukracharya, and Sharmishtha, the princess who becomes her servant.

    The novel follows Yayati from a lonely boyhood shadowed by his father Nahusha's fall, through his marriage to Devayani and his secret love for Sharmishtha, to his frantic pursuit of sensual gratification. The sage's disciple Kacha, who renounced Devayani's love, serves as a counterweight: a figure of restraint and selfless duty against the king's endless appetite.

    Khandekar wrote explicitly with modern India in mind, presenting Yayati as an image of a society chasing consumption and comfort without inner balance. The book won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1960 and the Jnanpith Award in 1974, the first Marathi work so honoured. It remains a staple of Marathi reading and is available in English as Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust.

    Book details

    AuthorV. S. Khandekar
    First published1959
    Original languageMarathi
    Translated byY. P. Kulkarni
    GenreMythology
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)450
    SettingThe kingdom of Hastinapura in the mythic age before the Mahabharata
    AwardsSahitya Akademi Award 1960, Jnanpith Award 1974

    Themes

    • Desire and restraint
    • Materialism
    • Love and jealousy
    • Fathers and sons
    • Self-knowledge

    Who should read it

    Readers who like myth used as a mirror for modern restlessness and appetite.

    If you liked this, try

    • Mrityunjay
    • Randamoozham
    • Siddhartha