Blood Matters

Masha Gessen

In 2004, genetic testing revealed that Masha Gessen had a mutation that predisposed her to ovarian and breast cancer. As she wrestled with a wrenching personal decision – what to do with such knowledge? – Gessen explored the landscape of this brave new world, speaking with others like her, and with experts including medical researchers, historians and religious thinkers. Blood Matters, a New York Times Notable Book for 2008, is a much needed field guide to this unfamiliar and unsettling territory, pointing the way towards the radical transformation genetic information is engineering in our sense of who we are and what we might become.

Blood Matters is about far more than Gessen's own story. She writes energetically ... about the grander context in which her personal drama takes place ... The book's enduring memory is Gessen's intelligence and wit as she's staring down the barrel of a gun

The Scotsman

Gessen argues that in a generation we will discuss our genetic inheritance in the same way that we discuss social class and other environmental influences on character nowadays. It's a superb read

The Times

A brave, passionate and well-written book

Sunday Times

The Author

Masha Gessen is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of several books, among them the National Book Award-winning The Future is History and the Samuel Johnson prize-longlisted The Man Without a Face. The recipient of numerous other awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Carnegie Fellowship, Gessen lives in New York City.

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