The Wellcome Trust Book Prize

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The Wellcome Trust Book Prize

1kidzdoc
Editat: maig 22, 2009, 8:44 pm

"The Wellcome Trust is the largest charity in the UK. It funds innovative biomedical research, in the UK and internationally, spending over £600 million each year to support the brightest scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust supports public debate about biomedical research and its impact on health and wellbeing."

This year the Wellcome Trust will award the inaugural Wellcome Trust Book Prize, which "celebrates the best of medicine in literature by awarding £25 000 each year for the finest fiction or non-fiction book centered around medicine."

According to the email I received today, "We have enjoyed a very strong response to the first round of the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, with nearly 70 books being submitted.

"There is a fairly even split between fiction and non-fiction, with entries ranging from comic thrillers to memoirs, crime fiction to science history, from specific case studies to wide-ranging philosophical explorations. Diverse subjects covered include hypochondria, cancer, mental health, genomics and neurobehavioural disorders. Several of the novels tackle issues surrounding difficult relationships, and many explore experiences of facing serious illness.

"The authors include first-time novelists and seasoned professionals, some with heavily medical or scientific backgrounds and others with no specialist experience."

The shortlist will be announced at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in October; a month later, a winner will be chosen.

2kidzdoc
Editat: oct. 13, 2009, 8:18 pm

The shortlist for the award was announced last week (thanks to FlossieT for bringing this to my attention):

Illness by Havi Carel:

While 'Illness', a unique and often moving book, is founded on Havi's experience of living with a degenerative illness, it was her training as a philosopher that pushed her to reflect more generally on the nature of health and illness. Havi explores illness by weaving together the personal story of her own illness with the insights drawn from her work as a philosopher. Too often illness is viewed as a localised biological dysfunction while ignoring the actual experience of the ill person, her fears, her hopes, the way she interacts with others and, ultimately, experiences life. This neglected dimension is the focus of this book. Havi shows how illness is a life-changing process rather than a limited physiological problem.

Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives by Brian Dillon (to be released in the US as "The Hypochondriacs: Nine Tormented Lives"):

Healthy or unhealthy, robust or failing, ignored or obsessed over, our bodies respond daily to our shifting state of mind, whether we are aware of the process or not. This book is about an especially dramatic instance of that relationship: the mind's invention of physical disease. Through his witty, entertaining and often moving examinations of the lives of nine subjects - James Boswell, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Daniel Paul Schreber, Alice James, Marcel Proust, Glenn Gould and Andy Warhol - Brian Dillon brilliantly unravels the tortuous connections between real and imagined illness, irrational fear and rational concern, anxiety and imagination, the mind's aches and the body's ideas.

Keeper by Andrea Gillies:

Andrea Gillies made the decision to take on the full-time care of her mother-in-law, Nancy, who has
Alzheimer's. With her family, she moved to a remote peninsula in northern Scotland to a house with space to accommodate Nancy and her elderly husband, and there embarked on an extraordinary journey. 'Keeper' describes the emotional strain of living with Alzheimer's, the trials faced by both carer and cared for, when patience and obligations are pushed to the limit. The book is also a brilliantly illuminating examination of the disease itself. It explores the brain and consciousness, and tackles profound questions about the self, the soul and how memory informs who we are.


Intuition by Allegra Goodman:

Sandy Glass is a charismatic publicity-seeking doctor. Marion Mendelssohn is an idealistic and
rigorous scientist. They are co-directors of a cancer research lab in Boston. As mentors and supervisors to their young protégés, they demand dedication and respect in a competitive environment where funding is scarce and results elusive. So when the experiments of Cliff Bannaker, the youngest member of their team, begin to produce encouraging results, suggesting the very real possibility of a major breakthrough, the entire lab becomes giddy with newfound expectation.


Three Letter Plague by Jonny Steinberg (published as Sizwe's Test: A Young Man's Journey Through Africa's AIDS Epidemic in the US):

Award-winning South African journalist Jonny Steinberg sets about telling a grassroots account of HIV and AIDS in South Africa through the story of a young man, Siswe Magadla, who runs a shop in a village in Lusikisiki, a district in Eastern Cape. What he discovers explains a modern-day tragedy, why the African AIDS epidemic will continue to spread, even with retroviral drugs and health education freely available.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese:

In his debut novel Abraham Verghese transports the reader from the 1940s to the present, from a convent in India to a cargo ship bound for the Yemen, from a tiny operating theatre in Ethiopia to a hospital in the Bronx. 'Cutting for Stone' is an epic of conjoined twins, doctors and patients, temptation and redemption, home and exile.

The winner of the £25,000 Prize will be announced at an awards reception at Wellcome Collection, London on 4 November 2009.

Wellcome Trust Book Prize shortlist announced

3teelgee
oct. 13, 2009, 9:42 pm

I've only heard of Cutting for Stone - and have heard rave reviews about it.

Interesting prize.

4catarina1
oct. 14, 2009, 10:10 pm

Intuition by Allegra Goodman was also on the long list for this year's Orange Prize.

Someone needs to tell all these authors to slow down on their writing. I can't keep up!!!!

5bonniebooks
oct. 19, 2009, 5:44 pm

I thought Intuition was unremarkable, and the blurbs didn't match up with my thinking about what kind of story this was at all.

6FlossieT
nov. 4, 2009, 3:17 pm

And the winner is...

Keeper - Andrea Gillies

Congratulations!! Now I have to remember where I put my copy...

7kidzdoc
nov. 4, 2009, 8:21 pm

Thanks for posting that, Rachael. I'll have to order a copy, next year, as I'm currently tripping over the 200+ books I've purchased this year. I probably have more books here that I really want to read than my local mega-Borders does, including the recent purchase of three books from this shortlist: Intuition, Tormented Hope, and Sizwe's Test.

8kidzdoc
oct. 13, 2010, 6:20 pm

The shortlist for this year's award was announced last week:

Fiction:

So Much for That by Lionel Shriver
Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson

Nonfiction:

Medic: Saving Lives - from Dunkirk to Afghanistan by John Nichol
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Teach Us to Sit Still: A Sceptic's Search for Health and Healing by Tim Parks
Angel of Death: The Story of Smallpox by Gareth Williams

The winner will be announced in early November.

More info: Shortlist

9bonniebooks
oct. 26, 2010, 4:50 pm

Thanks for updating us, Darryl. Hmmm... I'll have to check out Teach Us to Sit Still... Have you read So Much for That? I just read Something About Keven, so I'm a teeny bit interested in that one. Going to go check it out.

10kidzdoc
oct. 26, 2010, 6:16 pm

The only book I've read from this list is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Bonnie. I've ordered Grace Williams Says it Loud and Angel of Death: The Story of Smallpox from The Book Depository, and I'm planning to read So Much for That soon, as it's also a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.

11avaland
nov. 1, 2010, 1:03 pm

It's an interesting premise for an award, don't you think?

12kidzdoc
nov. 9, 2010, 3:19 pm

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is the winner of this year's Wellcome Trust Book Prize.

13kidzdoc
oct. 6, 2011, 8:23 am

The shortlist for this year's prize was announced in London today. The finalists are:

Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante
The Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso
The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, HarperCollins - 4th Estate
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Nemesis by Philip Roth
My Dear I Wanted To Tell You by Louisa Young

The winner will be announced on 9 November. More info, including summaries of each book:

Wellcome Trust Book Prize 2011 shortlist announced

I've read the Manguso, which I liked, and the Mukherjee, which was fabulous. I have the Roth, which I'll read next month, and I'll download the Kindle versions of the other three novels.

14kidzdoc
nov. 9, 2011, 8:44 pm

Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante is the winner of this year's Wellcome Trust Book Prize. From the prize's web site:

Turn of Mind (Random House, Harvill Secker) is written from the perspective of Dr Jennifer White, an eminent former surgeon in the final stages of Alzheimer's who comes under suspicion after the murder of her best friend. As the novel progresses, our narrator's mind collapses as she enters the last stages of dementia.

While her world falls apart, the investigation into the murder of her friend, Amanda, uncovers her family's darkest secrets. The mounting investigation and the ravages of disease both exert their pressures upon Dr White and the story pulls the reader in, building to a thrilling climax. LaPlante's superbly evocative first-person narrative brings the reality of Alzheimer's to life.

Clare Matterson, Director of Medical Humanities and Engagement at the Wellcome Trust, said: "Alice LaPlante's debut novel is a well-deserved winner of the Wellcome Trust Book Prize. It's a gripping, intricately plotted, and profoundly moving novel that takes the reader deep inside the mind of someone whose memories are being eroded by Alzheimer's. As with all the books shortlisted for the Prize, it has something both interesting and important to say about the place of medicine and disease in our lives."


I downloaded this book onto my Kindle last month, and I'll read it soon.

15kidzdoc
Editat: set. 5, 2012, 6:25 am

The longlist for this year's Wellcome Trust Book Prize was announced in London earlier today:

John Coates - The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust
Joshua Cody - Sic: A Memoir
Nick Coleman - The Train in the Night
Mohammed Hanif - Our Lady of Alice Bhatti
Peter James - Perfect People
Harry Karlinsky - The Evolution of Inanimate Objects
Darian Leader - What is Madness?
Ken Macleod - Intrusion
Peter Piot - No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses
Michael Shermer - The Believing Brain
Tim Spector - Identically Different
Rose Tremain - Merivel: A Man of His Time
Thomas Wright - Circulation: William Harvey, a Man in Motion
Paul Zak - The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity

This longlist, which consists of five novels and nine works of nonfiction, comes as quite a surprise to me, as there had not been a longlist in the previous three years of the award, only a shortlist of six books. The longlist will be announced on October 11, and the winner will be announced on November 7. More info:

http://www.wellcomebookprize.org/News/Announcements/WTVM056219.html

Since this is the only major book award about medicine I had planned to read the shortlist in its entirety before the award announcement. I'm pleased that I'll be able to get these books during my trip to London this month, but I'm not sure that I'll buy and read all 14 of the books by early November. I'll post comments about each book that I buy and read here. I do already own Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, and I had planned to buy Merivel and Circulation: William Harvey, a Man in Motion, the biography of the discoverer of the mammalian circulatory system, but the other books are unfamiliar to me.

16kidzdoc
oct. 12, 2012, 7:19 am

The shortlist for this year's Wellcome Trust Book Prize has been announced:

Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif
Perfect People by Peter James
Merivel: A Man of His Time by Rose Tremain
The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust by John Coates
The Train in the Night: A Story of Music and Loss by Nick Coleman
Circulation: William Harvey, a Man in Motion by Thomas Wright

The winning book will be announced in November. I've read the Wright, and I own the Hanif, the Tremain, and the Coates.

Shortlist

17bergs47
nov. 29, 2013, 4:19 am

In November 2013 the Wellcome Book Prize was relaunched at an event in the Wellcome Trust. New ambitions for the Prize were announced, as well as various key changes. These changes included an increase in prize money to £30 000 and a new timetable of key dates.

From this year onwards the shortlist and winner will be awarded in the spring, six months later than in previous years. This six month shift meant that the next prize falls into 2014 and therefore no prize was awarded in the 2013 calendar year.

18bergs47
nov. 7, 2014, 3:20 am

The shortlist for this year's (2014) Wellcome Trust Book Prize has been announced:

Hallucinations By Oliver Sacks

Far from the Tree By Andrew Solomon

Inconvenient People By Sarah Wise

The Signature of All Things By Elizabeth Gilbert

Wounded By Emily Mayhew

Creation By Adam Rutherford

19bergs47
nov. 7, 2014, 3:21 am