(The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer)
It’s now edging onto the last part of the year, and I want to mention my most significant (read: stupid) reading challenge.
I had some downtime in Australia earlier this year, and I told myself I was going to try to read something in Indonesian again. That something turned out to be an Indonesian translation of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Or Kanker: Biografi Suatu Penyakit (Cancer: Biography of a Disease). Why this book in particular? I had read it before, and it was the equivalent of only $9 AUD on the Google Play Store.
To make a comparison, I read this book back in 2011-2012-ish, and it took me about 4-5 days. This time around, though? It took the best part of 8 months. And it’s not like I could cheat or anything because my copy of the book has a dirty, great, big watermark across most of its PDF pages, which made the text section for translations very hard.
Instead, I had to content myself with squirting some metaphorical WD-40 into my ears in order to loosen the rust around the brain. And then I just went for it.
In a testament to Mukherjee’s engaging writing style and the translator’s efforts, I didn’t find this book staggeringly hard. The first few chapters were rough, but I was going at a merry pace by the end. One of the hallmarks of a good popular science book is clear language; if the concept is novel or difficult, there is no need to make things harder than they already are. While I have heard some critics complain that Mukherjee is perhaps too verbose, I never found that a problem myself in English—and if this were the case for the translation, I never would have finished it.
Mukherjee also does a fine job weaving narratives. On one hand, we have a fantastic chronicle of the disease. On the other hand, Mukherjee gives accounts of his own clinical life and the lives of a number of his patients. I thought this brought an interesting contrast that demonstrated how far we have come, comparing recent patients such as Carla with the first documented cases that date back thousands of years. The book is dense overall but not too difficult, as the narratives are clear and easy to follow (It’s certainly less eclectic in order than the more recently released Song of the Cell.) Going through it a second time, I was once again reminded why it won a Pulitzer Prize.
Well, did my language skills improve after setting out on this endeavour?
With regards to reading, yes. Speaking? I would say not so much… While I can say I’ve improved my vocabulary somewhat, much of what I have learnt cannot easily be worked into everyday conversations (Kelenjar getah bening = lymph nodes and sumsum tulang = bone marrow are two that come to mind.)
And I did try to follow this endeavour by trying out other books but my foray into reading a more contemporary novel has sadly stalled. The follow-up is either too hard or my vocabulary about these certain… specialised subjects is not quite there yet. (The subject of erectile dysfunction problems of aggressive teen boys, for example… Not high on my list of urgency)
But another of Mukherjee’s books was translated at the same time as this one. So that might be a better avenue. If only I had more time!