When Breath Becomes Air

• Main Author: Kalanithi, Paul (Author)
• Other Authors: Abraham Verghese (foreword)
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: London Vintage 2018
• Edition: Print book : Biography : English
• Subjects: Kalanithi, Paul > Death.; Kalanithi, Paul > Health.; Lungs > Cancer > Patients > United States
• Online Access: Click Here to View Status and Holdings.
• Item Description: Short-listed for Wellcome Book Prize 2017 (UK) Short-listed for Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography 2017 (UK); Originally published: London: The Bodley Head, 2016.
• Physical Description: xix, 228 pages 20 cm
• ISBN: 9781529110944

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.