2 Indian authors on Wellcome Book Prize 2017 shortlist

TIL Desk/World/London-Two Indian-American authors have been shortlisted for the 30,000 pound Wellcome Book Prize, which celebrates fiction and non-fiction works engaged with the topics of health and medicine. Siddhartha Mukherjee is on the list of the annual prize for his study of genetics and mental health in his book ‘The Gene’.

He is joined by fellow Indian-American author Paul Kalanithi, who could become the first posthumous winner of the prize for his life-affirming reflection on facing mortality ‘When Breath Becomes Air’.

Kirty Topiwala, publisher at Wellcome Collection and Wellcome Book Prize Manager, said: “With so many new books now being published in this area, the quality of this selection is necessarily high, and we are immensely proud of this year s superb shortlist.

“Each of these books offers the reader something different, but they all capture the acute pleasures and pains of being human.”  ‘When Breath Becomes Air’ is a memoir which chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from medical student to neurosurgeon, patient and father before his sad death from cancer while working on this book. It is the first posthumously published title to be in contention for the Wellcome Book Prize.