The Globe Magazine has an interview with oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee, who will will read from The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. He says the book grew out of a journal he kept during a Dana-Farber/ Mass. General fellowship.

 But, of course, cancer’s so enveloping that one can’t just write a journal. It becomes a much larger intellectual project. Susan Sontag wrote this about AIDS in the 1980s. She said AIDS is no longer just a biological illness, it’s almost a cultural category. And it seems to me that, in the 21st century, it’s cancer – a cultural category, replete with story and metaphor and a history and a future.

Reading: Thursday Dec. 2

HARVARD BOOKSTORE

1256 Massachusetts Avenue

Cambridge, MA 7:00PM

More on the writer and book from:

• NPR
• NYTimes Book Review podcast
• Charlie Rose