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  • Published: 2 January 2014
  • ISBN: 9780143571148
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $22.99

Tell Me the Truth: Conversations with my patients about life and death




Tell Me the Truth is an acknowledgement of the incredible courage of ordinary people as they confront the big issues of life and death.

'Cancer patients put up with the most and complain the least, endowed with an uncommon wisdom that is a privilege to observe. It is not simply that they see the big picture; if you spend long enough with them, they help you see it too.'

Oncologist Ranjana Srivastava, working in one of Australia's busiest hospitals, is constantly present at the moments that change people's lives forever: when they are told they have cancer. As her patients face this hardest of truths, Dr Srivastava is privileged and humbled to see the wisdom and clarity with which they bear their illness. Here she allows us to witness the intimacies of the world of medicine and shares the unexpected truths that she has learned about what is genuinely important.

Tell Me the Truth is an acknowledgement of the incredible courage of ordinary people as they confront the big issues of life and death.

'A moving examination of the ways doctors and patients communicate.' Caroline Overington, The Australian

'Enlightening.' The Age

  • Published: 2 January 2014
  • ISBN: 9780143571148
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Ranjana Srivastava

Dr Ranjana Srivastava was educated in India, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. She graduated from Monash University with a first-class honours degree and several awards in medicine. In 2004 she won the prestigious Fulbright Award, which she completed at the University of Chicago. Ranjana is now an oncologist and educator in the Melbourne public hospital system.

Ranjana's writing has been featured in Time, The Guardian, The Week, New York Times, The Age and Best Australian Science Writing, and in numerous prestigious medical journals including the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. In 2008 her story 'Ode to a Patient' won the Cancer Council Victoria Arts Award for outstanding writing and in 2012 Ranjana won the Nossal Global Health Prize for writing. She has published two books: Tell Me the Truth, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award, and the warmly received Penguin Special Dying for a Chat, which addresses the lack of communication between doctors and patients.

Ranjana lives in Melbourne with her husband and three young children.

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