A history of mental illness - bipolar disorder and schizophrenia - in the author's family underpins this intimate history of the gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee. The quest to understand heredity and family begins with a monk, Mendel, and his peas.

Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher, a stem cell biologist and cancer geneticist. He is also author of The Emperor of All Maladies, a biography of cancer which won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction, and the Guardian first book award.

He is assistant professor of Medicine at Columbia University.

Written by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Read by Raj Ghatak
Abridged and Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4. Show less