“In this wonderful ethnography, Dwaipayan Banerjee shows how cancer in India exists across many relationships, aspirations, frustrations, gendered battles, caregiving gestures, medical sciences, and familial trials. In its lives far beyond the body, cancer is both concealed within the folds of secrecy and stigma and yet still able to reveal the hidden stories that only it can tell. Subtly written and ethnographically rich, this book will have a very wide reach.” — Vincanne Adams, editor of Metrics: What Counts in Global Health
“How do people navigate the uncertainties of cancer? Dwaipayan Banerjee's vivid ethnography shows how secrecy and silence are the currencies for knowing and managing cancer's diagnosis, treatment, pain, and survival in India. He demonstrates the profound implications this has for the ways people voice illness and forge connections with others in uncertain times. This timely and important book will be a landmark for thinking about survival and endurance in medical anthropology, science studies, public health, and South Asian studies.” — Harris Solomon, author of Metabolic Living: Food, Fat, and the Absorption of Illness in India
“Building on the work of scholars such as Susan Sontag, Lawrence Cohen, Veena Das, Sarah Pinto and Lochlann Jain, this book shows how pain is experienced and understood when cancer gets embedded within fragile social relations. Mr Banerjee seems aware that his work could easily slip into romanticising the superhuman resilience of an underserved population, so he approaches the analysis of patients’ survival strategies with remarkable caution and sensitivity…. [T]he author supplements his ethnographic work with insights from cancer memoirs and cancer films. This approach strengthens his analysis, and gives it greater emotional and intellectual depth.” — Chintan Girish Modi, Business Standard Review