Here’s a treat for the book lovers in the crowd: the Wellcome Trust just announced the shortlist for their book prize. The shortlist, which celebrates the finest recently published books in health, medicine and medical science, includes two novels and four non-fiction books. The prize aims to stimulate interest and debate about medical science, and the winning author is awarded £30,000.
Since both fiction and nonfiction are eligible, I think of the Wellcome Book Prize as being pleasantly quirky since it can include books from a number of genres, such as biography, crime, historical fiction, current affairs, science fiction, and others.
“Highlighting the importance of literature in exploring the human experience within medicine, the shortlist for the Wellcome Book Prize 2015 covers a pleasingly diverse array of subjects and genres”, said author Bill Bryson, Chair of Judges, in a press release.
“All six books blend exquisite writing with scientific rigour and personal experience, making medical science accessible in six very different ways. Having found my own way to science through literature, I’m thrilled to recommend each one of them.”
The 2015 Wellcome Trust Book Prize shortlist:
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The Iceberg by Marion Coutts [304 pages, Atlantic Books, 2014; Guardian Bookshop; Amazon UK hardcover/Kindle UK; Amazon US hardcover//kindle US]
Publisher’s synopsis: In 2008, the art critic Tom Lubbock was diagnosed with a brain tumour. The tumour was located in the area controlling speech and language, and would eventually rob him of the ability to speak. He died early in 2011. Marion Coutts was his wife.
In short bursts of beautiful, textured prose, Coutts describes the eighteen months leading up to her partner’s death. This book is an account of a family unit, man, woman, young child, under assault, and how the three of them fought to keep it intact.
Written with extraordinary narrative force and power, The Iceberg is almost shocking in its rawness. It charts the deterioration of Tom’s speech even as it records the developing language of his child. Fury, selfishness, grief, indignity and impotence are all examined and brought to light.
Yet out of this comes a rare story about belonging, an ‘adventure of being and dying’. This book is a celebration of each other, friends, family, art, work, love and language.
The Iceberg was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.
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Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh [288 pages, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014; Guardian Bookshop; Amazon UK hardcover/paperback/audio download/Kindle UK; Amazon US hardcover/paperback/audio download/kindle US]
Publisher’s synopsis: What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How does it feel to hold someone’s life in your hands, to cut into the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? How do you live with the consequences of performing a potentially life-saving operation when it all goes wrong?
In neurosurgery, more than in any other branch of medicine, the doctor’s oath to ‘do no harm’ holds a bitter irony. Operations on the brain carry grave risks. Every day, Henry Marsh must make agonising decisions, often in the face of great urgency and uncertainty. If you believe that brain surgery is a precise and exquisite craft, practised by calm and detached surgeons, this gripping, brutally honest account will make you think again. With astonishing compassion and candour, one of the country’s leading neurosurgeons reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets and the moments of black humour that characterise a brain surgeon’s life. Do No Harm is an unforgettable insight into the countless human dramas that take place in a busy modern hospital. Above all, it is a lesson in the need for hope when faced with life’s most difficult decisions.
Do No Harm was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Prize and for the 2014 Guardian First Book Award.
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The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being: Evolution and the Making of Us by Alice Roberts [320 pages, Quercus Books, 2014; Guardian Bookshop; Amazon UK hardcover/Kindle UK; Amazon US hardcover/kindle US]
Publisher’s synopsis: The presenter of the BBC’s The Incredible Human Journey gives us a new and highly accessible look at our own bodies, allowing us to understand how we develop as an embryo, from a single egg into a complex body, and how our embryos contain echoes of our evolutionary past.
Bringing together the latest scientific discoveries, Professor Alice Roberts illustrates that evolution has made something which is far from perfect. Our bodies are a quirky mix of new and old, with strokes of genius alongside glitches and imperfections which are all inherited from distant ancestors. Our development and evolutionary past explains why, as embryos, we have what look like gills, and as adults we suffer from back pain.
This is a tale of discovery, not only exploring why and how we have developed as we have, but also looking at the history of our anatomical understanding. It combines the remarkable skills and qualifications Alice Roberts has as a doctor, anatomist, osteoarchaeologist and writer. Above all, she has a rare ability to make science accessible, relevant and interesting to mainstream audiences and readers.
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My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel [416 pages, Windmill Books, 2014; Guardian Bookshop; Amazon UK hardcover/paperback/audio download/Kindle UK; Amazon US hardcover/paperback/audio download/audio CD/kindle US]
Publisher’s synopsis: A riveting, revelatory, and moving account of the author’s struggles with anxiety, and of the history of efforts by scientists, philosophers, and writers to understand the condition.
As recently as thirty-five years ago, anxiety did not exist as a diagnostic category. Today, it is the most common form of officially classified mental illness. Scott Stossel gracefully guides us across the terrain of an affliction that is pervasive yet too often misunderstood.
Drawing on his own long-standing battle with anxiety, Stossel presents an astonishing history, at once intimate and authoritative, of the efforts to understand the condition from medical, cultural, philosophical, and experiential perspectives. He ranges from the earliest medical reports of Galen and Hippocrates, through later observations by Robert Burton and Søren Kierkegaard, to the investigations by great nineteenth-century scientists, such as Charles Darwin, William James, and Sigmund Freud, as they began to explore its sources and causes, to the latest research by neuroscientists and geneticists. Stossel reports on famous individuals who struggled with anxiety, as well as on the afflicted generations of his own family. His portrait of anxiety reveals not only the emotion’s myriad manifestations and the anguish anxiety produces but also the countless psychotherapies, medications, and other (often outlandish) treatments that have been developed to counteract it. Stossel vividly depicts anxiety’s human toll -- its crippling impact, its devastating power to paralyze -- while at the same time exploring how those who suffer from it find ways to manage and control it.
My Age of Anxiety is learned and empathetic, humorous and inspirational, offering the reader great insight into the biological, cultural, and environmental factors that contribute to the affliction.
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All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews [336 pages, Faber & Faber, 2014; Guardian Bookshop; Amazon UK hardcover/paperback/audio download/Kindle UK; Amazon US hardcover/paperback/audio download/Kindle US]
Publisher’s synopsis: Elf and Yoli are two smart, loving sisters.
Elf is a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, happily married: she wants to die.
Yoli is divorced, broke, sleeping with the wrong men: she desperately wants to keep her older sister alive.
When Elf’s latest suicide attempt leaves her hospitalised weeks before her highly anticipated world tour, Yoli is forced to confront the impossible question of whether it is better to let a loved one go.
Miriam Toews’s All My Puny Sorrows, at once tender and unquiet, offers a profound reflection on the limits of love, and the sometimes unimaginable challenges we experience when childhood becomes a new country of adult commitments and responsibilities.
This book was shortlisted for the Folio Prize 2015 and was the Sunday Times Top Choice Summer Read.
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Bodies of Light by Sarah Moss [320 pages, Granta Books, 2014; Guardian Bookshop; Amazon UK hardcover/paperback/audio download/Kindle UK; Amazon US hardcover/paperback/audio download/kindle US]
Publisher’s synopsis: Bodies of Light is a deeply poignant tale of a psychologically tumultuous nineteenth century upbringing set in the atmospheric world of Pre-Raphaelitism and the early suffrage movement. Ally (older sister of May in Night Waking), is intelligent, studious and engaged in an eternal - and losing - battle to gain her mother’s approval and affection. Her mother, Elizabeth, is a religious zealot, keener on feeding the poor and saving prostitutes than on embracing the challenges of motherhood. Even when Ally wins a scholarship and is accepted as one of the first female students to read medicine in London, it still doesn’t seem good enough. The first in a two-book sequence, Bodies of Light will propel Sarah Moss into the upper echelons of British novelists. It is a triumphant piece of historical fiction and a profoundly moving master class in characterisation.
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As you can see, this shortlist features a diverse range of subjects and perspectives, from brain surgeons to historic trailblazers, from anxiety sufferers to survivors of loss.
“This year’s list proves again what a vibrant, surprising and moving slice of contemporary literature Wellcome Collection’s concern with medicine and health can reveal”, said Ken Arnold, Head of Public Programmes at Wellcome Collection.
“These books make it clear that our core themes are also inspiring some of the best writers at work today. Here are six wonderful books of both fact and fiction that offer powerful insights into the body and the mind, the practices of medicine, as well as the impact of death and suicide. I await with bated breath to see which one will win our prize.”
This video is a short interview with Bill Bryson, as he discusses each of the six shortlisted books:
In addition to internationally acclaimed author Bill Bryson, the Wellcome Trust’s 2015 panel of judges includes:
- Professor Uta Frith DBE, the Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at UCL
- Mark Haddon, bestselling author
- Razia Iqbal, BBC presenter
- Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, barrister and broadcaster
The 2014 prize will be presented at a ceremony at the Wellcome Collection on 29 April 2015.
The Wellcome Trust invites your comments on the shortlisted books via Twitter using the hashtag #WellcomeBkPrize. They also have a dedicated twitter account for the prize @wellcomebkprize
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