The Wellcome Book Prize is awarded to a fiction or non-fiction book about health or medicine. Since its launch in 2009, there has been a shortlist of six books but this year, there is a longlist of twelve books for the very first time. The nominated books which were announced today are:
- How to Survive a Plague by David France
- Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
- When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
- Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal (translated from the French by Jessica Moore)
- The Golden Age by Joan London
- Cure by Jo Marchant
- The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss
- The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
- A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford
- Miss Jane by Brad Watson
- I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
‘The Tidal Zone’ by Sarah Moss tells the story of Adam Goldschmidt, a stay-at-home dad and part-time academic, married to overworked GP Emma. Their eldest daughter fifteen-year-old Miriam suddenly collapses on a school playing field and nearly dies after going into anaphylactic cardiac arrest. In the aftermath of the incident, the family must find a way to move on and return to some form of normality whilst coming to terms with the possibility that Miriam’s condition could be genetic and may happen again at any time. 
Shortlisted for the 
Winner of the 
Winner of the Wellcome Book Prize in 2014, ‘Far From the Tree: Parents, children and the search for identity’ is Andrew Solomon’s account of “ordinary people making courageous choices”. It is a densely written and detailed study which examines the links between identity and disability and the challenges faced by those perceived to be “different”. Divided into ten main topics, the first six (deaf, dwarfs, Down’s Syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, disability) focus on “horizontal” categories typically classified as illnesses, while the other four (prodigies, rape, crime, transgender) are “vertical” identities which are assumed to be socially constructed. 
A Little Blog of Books 
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