When Breath Becomes Air: The ultimate moving life-and-death story

Paul Kalanithi

Mar 2016 · Vintage Digital · Narrated by Cassandra Campbell and Sunil Malhotra

About this audiobook

THE NEW YORK TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER

'Finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option...Unmissable' New York Times

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live.

When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity – the brain – and finally into a patient and a new father.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when when life is catastrophically interrupted? What does it mean to have a child as your own life fades away?

Paul Kalanithi died while working on this profoundly moving book, yet his words live on as a guide to us all. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.

Ratings and reviews

I only managed to get through a fifth of the book. It was pretentious, and the author was clearly extremely self-absorbed (you would infer he was basically the most promising neurosurgeon that ever walked the Earth). There are *much* better books out there if you want to contemplate life, universe and everything.

Waste of time. A real overrated book. The author is unbelievably selfish and egotist to boot. He blackmailed his wife who has her entire life ahead of her, into getting pregnant and gloats about it. AVOID.

A very heart wrenching story of a young doctor facing death at a age when he was preparing to enjoy success and happiness at work and home. A sad but true depiction of hardships faced by medical colleagues early in their life which struck down by fate as in this case by the author leaves a indelible mark on the family left behind.

About the author

PAUL KALANITHI was a neurosurgeon and writer. He held degrees in English literature, human biology, and history and philosophy of science and medicine from Stanford and Cambridge universities before graduating from Yale School of Medicine. He also received the American Academy of Neurological Surgery’s highest award for research.

His reflections on doctoring and illness have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Paris Review Daily.

Kalanithi died in March 2015, aged 37. He is survived by his wife, Lucy, and their daughter, Elizabeth Acadia.