HarperCollins India to publish award-winning science journalist, Angela Saini’s next, ‘WHAT ARE YOU? The Mad Science of Race – and Its Fatal Return’

HarperCollins India is proud to announce that it has acquired the Indian subcontinent rights for award-winning investigative science journalist, broadcaster and best-selling author Angela Saini’s next book, WHAT ARE YOU? The Mad Science of Race – and Its Fatal Return. It will be published in summer 2019.

About the book –

WHAT ARE YOU? explores how science created the idea of race and fanned the flames of racism. It looks at how modern genetics, medicine, psychology and anthropology are failing to destroy these old ideas and sometimes even perpetuating them. Science is at the very heart of this story and it’s about how bad science has left us with the most dangerous idea in the world – that deep down, we humans are not all the same. That race is real.

As someone who has both known and understands the struggle for identity, Angela Saini, in WHAT ARE YOU?, will take readers on a journey to explore how racial identity was created. As she investigates, first-hand, how and why scientists are still getting race wrong, she will also examine, among other things, migration, environmental factors, personalized medicine (how more drugs will be shunted along racial lines), and paid services that analyse genetic ancestry.

While the scientific ridiculousness of race may mean little in a world in which race has been made tangibly real through politics, culture and violence, it is important, now more than ever, to remind people just how our identities were invented, and that’s a task that this book will accomplish.

Speaking about the forthcoming publication, Angela Saini said, ‘This is the book I have wanted to write my whole life. I’m so grateful that HarperCollins India will be releasing it, and I look forward to debating the issues once it comes out.’

Diya Kar, the publisher who acquired the book, said: ‘Angela is brilliant. And she’s particularly good at questioning traditional beliefs and raising crucial, uncomfortable questions. Racism, prejudice, are very real problems today. In WHAT ARE YOU? Angela examines the dangerous lines that are being crossed in science—out of both ignorance and hatred. This will be a powerful, pathbreaking book, and we’re very proud to be publishing it.’

About the author –

Angela Saini is an award-winning science journalist and broadcaster. She is the author of the bestselling Geek Nation: How Indian Science is Taking Over the World, an Independent book of the year, and the critically acclaimed, multiple prize-winning Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story. She regularly presents science shows on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, Science, New Scientist, The Times, Economist, GQ and Wired.

Angela’s work has won a number of national and international prizes, including a gold Kavli Science Journalism Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2015 and the Association of British Science Writers’ Award for best news story in 2012. She has a Masters in Engineering from Oxford University, where she was chair of the student union’s anti-racism committee. She was a fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology between 2012 and 2013.

For more information, please contact – Shabnam.Srivastava@harpercollins-india.com