When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi 2016

Devastation Rating

Existential Dread
grief loss literary fiction philosophical

Our Take

A neurosurgeon is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and writes this book before he dies. Kalanithi does not perform bravery or peace — he writes the fear and the grief and the love with a doctor's precision and a dying man's urgency. The epilogue by his wife is the most devastating three pages in recent memoir.

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