Cover art for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Published
Picador, June 2024
ISBN
9781035038619
Format
Softcover, 464 pages
Dimensions
19.6cm × 13cm × 2.8cm

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Fast $7.95 flat-rate shipping!
Only pay $7.95 per order within Australia, including end-to-end parcel tracking.
100% encrypted and secure
We adhere to industry best practice and never store credit card details.
Talk to real people
Contact us seven days a week – our staff are here to help.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a fascinating mix of memoir and science, telling the story of how one woman's cells have saved countless lives. Now an HBO film starring Oprah Winfrey & Rose Byrne.

'No dead woman has done more for the living . . . A fascinating, harrowing, necessary book.' - Hilary Mantel, Guardian

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells - taken without her knowledge - became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta's family did not learn of her 'immortality' until more than twenty years after her death, with devastating consequences . . .

Rebecca Skloot's fascinating account is the story of the life, and afterlife, of one woman who changed the medical world forever. Balancing the beauty and drama of scientific discovery with dark questions about who owns the stuff our bodies are made of, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an extraordinary journey in search of the soul and story of a real woman, whose cells live on today in all four corners of the world.

Related books