Indian-American physician Siddhartha Mukherjee's acclaimed book on cancer, 'The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer,' has won the prestigious 2011 Pulitzer Prize in the general non-fiction category.According to the Pulitzer citation, the book by the New York-based cancer physician and researcher is an elegant inquiry, at once clinical and personal, into the long history of an insidious disease that, despite treatment breakthroughs,still bedevils medical science.The Pulitzer for general non-fiction is awarded to a distinguished and appropriately documented book of nonfiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in any other category.It carries a 10,000 dollar award.India-born Mukherjee is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and a staff cancer physician at Columbia University Medical Centre.In his book, Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their witsagainst an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out war against cancer.