When Breath Becomes Air

The powerful and moving memoir of a doctor, the global bestseller

By: Paul Kalanithi

Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra, Lucy Kalanithi

Brought to you by Penguin.

THE NEW YORK TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER

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.

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

© Paul Kalanithi 2016 (P) Penguin Audio 2016

Critic reviews

A vital book about dying. Awe-inspiring and exquisite. Obligatory reading for the living. (Nigella Lawson)

Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful. (Atul Gawande, author of BEING MORTAL)

Powerful and poignant.

Extraordinary...Remarkable... luminous, revelatory memoir about mortality and what makes being alive meaningful ... Lyrical, intimate, insistent and profound. Kalanithi had the mind of the polymath and the ear of a poet.

A stark, fascinating, well-written and heroic memoir. (Stefanie Marsh)

Exceptional. (Katie Law)

When I came to the end of the last flawless paragraph of When Breath Becomes Air, all I could do was turn to the first page and read the whole thing again. Searingly intelligent, beautifully written, and beyond brave, I haven't been so marked by a book in years. (Gabriel Weston, author of DIRECT RED)

A meditation on what makes a life worth living.

A powerful and compelling read.

Dr Kalanithi describes, clearly and simply, and entirely without self-pity, his journey from innocent medical student to professionally detached and all-powerful neurosurgeon to helpless patient, dying from cancer. He learns lessons about the reality of illness and the doctor-patient relationship that most doctors only learn in old age but Paul Kalanithi died at the tragically early age of 37.

Every doctor should read this book - written by a member of our own tribe, it helps us understand and overcome the barriers we all erect between ourselves and our patients as soon as we are out of medical school

Touching!!!!

Very good interesting and touching book!! Must listen atleast once!!!

Story was very much touching

When breath becomes air

Excellent , very inspirational. Very open and honest account of his life with cancer .

A beautifully written book.

This book and the lovely voices will live with me long after the last word.

Thanks thanks thanks Paul

Life doesn’t give you second chances. Life is now. Live the present. LIVE now. Thank you!!!

A touching account of Paul's battle with cancer

If you could sum up When Breath Becomes Air in three words, what would they be?

touching emotional honest

What about Cassandra Campbell and Sunil Malhotra ’s performance did you like?

Read gently with empathy and emotion

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

The book resonated with me and was an extremely emotional journey as my mother recently suffered with, and died of, cancer. I could identify with all the stages, emotions and physical deterioration that he experienced from a loved one's point of view (the epilogue by his wife Lucy was especially touching as a lot of what she wrote was very real and touched raw patches of emotion still exposed by my mother's death).
Very well written but so sad.
It did help me see the trauma I experienced during the deterioration and eventual death of my mother as something that is not unique and that I will overcome the bereavement.

Any additional comments?

Brilliant - a must read for anyone who is going through or has been through a similar experience.