When Breath Becomes Air

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When Breath Becomes Air

Written by: Paul Kalanithi

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Sunil Malhotra

Free with 30-day trial

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About this listen

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.

Cancer

Death & Dying

Death & Grief

Medical

Physical Illness & Disease

Professionals & Academics

Relationships

Self-Help

Sociology

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)

A great, indelible book ... as intimate and illuminating as Atul Gawande’s “Being Mortal,” to cite only one recent example of a doctor’s book that has had exceptionally wide appeal ... I guarantee that finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option ... gripping from the start ... None of it is maudlin. Nothing is exaggerated. As he wrote to a friend: “It’s just tragic enough and just imaginable enough.” And just important enough to be unmissable.

Powerful and poignant.

Less a memoir than a reflection on life and purpose… A vital book.

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.

Powerful and poignant… Elegantly written posthumous memoir… Should be compulsory for anyone who intends to be a doctor… A profound reflection on the meaning of life.

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)

Most relevant

Every sentence vibrates with elegance and depth, wrote in a poetic way. It sometimes leaves you speechless and sometimes provokes many thousands of thoughts. Its unfinished nature left me saddened but you have to accept the truth whatever it might be, isn't that one of the core truths of this book?