From Eureka, our new science and
environment magazine

It is exactly 50 years, Raymond Tallis reminds me, since C. P. Snow gave the Rede Lecture in Cambridge that posited “two cultures” — humanities and the sciences — in opposition to each other; it’s an idea that has plagued us ever since. Although, as Tallis remarks, you could argue that things are much worse now, with 200 cultures rather than a mere two. Tallis, renowned as a scientist, a philosopher and a poet, appreciates the problems caused by this divide better than most — which is why he was so pleased to be a judge of the new Wellcome Book Prize. Its shortlist is announced here exclusively — and the winner will be revealed at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival on October 9.

The prize, worth £25,000 to the winner, is described as “celebrating medicine in literature”. But for those of you who think that sounds as if the shortlisted books will be medical textbooks, think again. Two out of the six books on the shortlist are novels; all are aimed at the general reader. What sort of books were eligible? “We created a code of practice as we went along,” Tallis tells me. “Most importantly, of course, the science had to stand up. But more than that — science and art, the objective and the subjective, had to be fully integrated; to do that is no small achievement.”

Roughly 60 books were considered by the judges, chaired by Jo Brand, who spent ten years as a psychiatric nurse before branching out into comedy. Also judging are Richard Barnett, who teaches the history of modern medicine and the history of evolution in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and also happens to be a poet; Quentin Cooper, who presents Radio 4’s The Material World, and Gwyneth Lewis, Wales’s first National Poet and a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts.

The judges have come up with a fascinating, varied and challenging shortlist. Tallis is keen to stress that while all these books are accessible, one of the causes of the “two cultures” divide is an unwillingness to even try to surmount intellectual obstacles. “We have an education system which is based on the premise that if you challenge children — well, that this amounts nearly to child abuse. ‘Difficulty’ is perceived as wrong, as something to be avoided.” None of these books is “difficult” but all of them, as Tallis says, “adumbrate a point of convergence where these aspects of life — science and art — can acknowledge each other”.

www.wellcomebookprize.org

The shortlist;

Three Letter Plague: A Young Man’s Journey Through a Great Epidemic

by Jonny Steinberg

Vintage, £8.99

Journalist and ethnographer Jonny Steinberg’s account of his friendship with “Sizwe Magadla”, a 29-year-old man from rural South Africa, is “an eloquent reminder that we can’t use logic to predict people’s behaviour”, said Elizabeth Pisani in The Observer. Despite the availability of effective medical treatment, Sizwe refuses to take an HIV/Aids test. Together the two men explore the implications of the epidemic and the “architecture of shame” that exaggerates the battle between Western medicine and traditional remedies. “What compels is the sustained, intimate, yet fractured dialogue between Sizwe and Jonny,” said Rachel Holmes in The Times. Steinberg knows that the HIV/Aids disaster is too complex for any grand conclusion, says Tim Butcher in the Telegraph, but his book “made me wiser about how the pandemic has caused so much death in South Africa”. Earlier this year, the Three Letter Plague was also shortlisted for The Sunday Times Alan Paton prize for non-fiction.

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