(Mukherjee has been criticised for a shorter adaptation of a chapter of the book he published in the New Yorker. Mukherjee’s book is a beautifully written history of the gene that does not shy away from the hard science or the difficult abstractions. There is a fine line for this kind of thing though.

Gregor Mendel’s abbot was unhappy for the priest to be experimenting with mice in his room but didn’t mind the pioneering researcher’s dabbling with plants: “He drew the line at mice, but didn’t mind giving peas a chance.' “The twin points of light in his eyes had dulled and nearly vanished, as if someone had entered his eyes with a minute paintbrush and painted them gray.' The most striking feature of his cousin Moni’s illness, Mukherjee writes, “was not the storm within his mind, but the lull in his eyes': The book opens with Mukherjee discussing a history of mental illness that has ravaged his family over the years. There are two qualities to Mukherjee’s writing that appear with just the right frequency in this book: tenderness and a superbly corny sense of humour. But once most readers reconcile with the fact that the book is to be read more than remembered, unlike a textbook on genetics, Mukherjee’s story-telling fizzes along comfortably. This twin-narrative is always problematic in books, and it is slightly so here especially when Mukherjee moves back and forth in time to explore themes and sub-themes. The Gene is both a chronological and thematic history of the development of the gene as first an idea and then as biochemical entity. The gene is a “our manual of instruction' and Mukherjee’s book is a history of how scientists gradually decoded, in several stages, the pages of the fundamental cypher that is the gene. The history of the gene is, thus, not just a quest to figure out what we are made of, but also a quest, often vile, to discover what more can be made of us.

Mukherjee writes that just as the atom “tantalises us with the prospect of controlling matter and energy', the gene “tantalizes us with the prospect of controlling our bodies and fates'. Like the diminutive atom, the gene promises both great possibilities and great danger. The parallel with the atom is particularly apt. He does this by first confidently grouping the gene along with two other tiny particles that are fundamental to modern existence-the byte and the atom. Mukherjee’s book, even if it does progressively get more complicated as it goes along, undoes this damage expertly.

The gene siddhartha mukherjee review