Silk

There is not just one story of silk.
In silk is science, history and mythology.
In silk is the future. Aarathi Prasad's Silk is a gorgeous new history weaving together the story of a unique material that has fascinated the world for millennia.

AARATHI PRASAD is a writer, broadcaster, and researcher. She is the author of In the Bonesetter's Waiting Room: Travels Through Indian Medicine (Profile, 2016) which was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and won the Popular Medicine Award at the BMA Awards 2017; and Like A Virgin: How Science is Redesigning the Rules of Sex (Oneworld, 2012), shortlisted for the Salon Prize and translated into Italian, Bulgarian and Dutch. Born in London to an Indian mother who wore only silk saris and a Caribbean father who loved the natural world, Aarathi was educated in the West Indies and the UK. After completing a PhD in molecular genetics from Imperial College London, she later trained in bioarchaeology. She works as a Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Institute for Global Health, focussed on sustainability and urban health in Kenya, and as part of an international team excavating and analysing ancient DNA from funerary sites in Spain, Rome, and Pompeii.