December 2018 book review part 2

THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES, by Siddhartha Mukhergee
Subtitled ‘A Biography of Cancer’, this Pulitzer-Prize winning book is indeed a rundown of cancer, from its earliest apprehension by Hippocrates and other physicians of antiquity, to the most modern genetic therapies for that most terrible of plagues on mankind.
          Now, as a doctor, I consider myself something of an expert in this field, as do all doctors, even if they are not oncologists (cancer specialists), because cancer is just about the commonest life-threatening disease we encounter. But cancer, as Dr Mukhergee is quick to remind us, is not a single disease, but hundreds of very different types, so the question “Can we find a cure for cancer?” Is the same as saying “Can we find 500 different cures for cancer?” Having said that, there are certain things that are common to them all: they are groups of cells that cannot stop dividing, and are, worryingly, immortal. Recent work in genetics has worked out why this is the case. Cancer cells have genes in them which do one of 2 things: either they ‘press on the gas’, accelerating the growth of cell division, or they ‘cut the brake cables’, inhibiting the usual mechanisms that limit cell growth. In either case, the results are the same: uncontrolled growth. Also cancer cells possess a gene which inactivates processes which make cells age and die - conferring immortality on them. All this is bad for us, their hosts.
           The bulk of this book is about humanity’s (or at least America’s, for this is above all a book about America) attempts to combat this awful disease, and, it turns out, the future does indeed lie in genetic modification treatments, which is good for us, because the predecessors, anti-cancer drugs and radiation therapy, inflict so much damage on healthy cells it was often a case of ‘the cancer was cured, but the patient died’.

AUSTERLITZ, by W.G. Sebald
An academic runs into a rather interesting man at a railway station and they chat. Later, entirely by coincidence they meet again and their conversation continues as if it had never been interrupted. Then they decide to meet again intentionally, and slowly the story of Austerlitz is revealed. Turns out he was part of the “Kinder Transport” scheme in 1939 and found himself living with a nonconformist priest and his wife in, of all places, Bala in North Wales. But he is not told of his origins until much later, when he makes the decision to find out what he can of his lost parents and the life he left behind at the age of four.
           Like all Sebald’s books, the text is littered with blurry photographs which augment the often strange but always beautiful text. (Interestingly, Edmund de Waal opted to use the same device in his book - see previous blog) And as is usual with Sebald, what emerges is a book of great depth and subtlety, but which remains disarmingly easy to read - this despite the entire book being composed of only 6 paragraphs in its 300-odd pages, and, even more amazingly, often composed of 4, 5 and 600 word sentences; indeed one is nearly 4000 words long, and covers 16 pages of text! This may be a record, I’m not sure. I certainly haven’t seen anything like it outside Ulysses.
In summary, may I say this: everyone should read Sebald, and I mean everyone. Start, like me, with The Rings of Saturn, go on to The Emigrants, then Vertigo, and round it off with Austerlitz. You won’t regret it for a second, I guarantee it.