When Breath Becomes Air: THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER

This is a short but profoundly moving and powerful book. Kalanithi, a young and brilliant neurosurgeon, is confronted by what proves to be his own terminal cancer. In his undergraduate days he had contemplated a career as a writer and had completed a degree in English Literature; for Kalanithi literature ‘illuminated another’s experience … and provided the richest material for moral reflection.’ However, it was science and medicine that won him over.

We are very fortunate that, in his last few years, months and days, he recorded the passage of his life and the emotions he confronted as he became aware his life was imminently finite. He wrote to a friend that the good news was that he’d survived a Keats and a couple of Brontës.

This is, in some ways, an easy book to read; Kalanithi’s skill as a storyteller jumps off the page. The first half is the account of how a good, intelligent young man conducted his early life and made choices about who and what he was going to be. This alone would make the book stand out. But it is the second half when he describes the passage of his illness and its effect on him both physically and mentally that is profoundly harrowing yet uplifting. It is his great skill as a writer that raises this book from just a tragic tale to one that has lessons and meaning for us all.

Mark Rubbo