Paul Kalanithi had studied English literature and biology at Stanford, history and philosophy of science at Cambridge, and medicine at Yale before training as a neurosurgeon at Stanford. In his final year of residency, with prestigious job offers waiting, he was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer despite never having smoked.
The first part of the book describes how a young man obsessed with the question of what gives life meaning chose to pursue it through the brain, the organ where identity resides. He conveys the punishing hours of surgical training and the weight of operating on patients whose speech or personality could be changed by a millimetre. The second part shifts to his illness: treatment, the uncertainty of prognosis, his return to the operating room, and the decision with his wife Lucy to have a child.
Kalanithi died in March 2015 before finishing the manuscript; Lucy Kalanithi wrote an epilogue, and Abraham Verghese contributed a foreword. Spare and lyrical, it is often read by medical students and by families facing serious illness. The book asks how a person should spend limited time and what work, love and meaning look like when the future suddenly shrinks.
Book details
| Author | Paul Kalanithi |
|---|---|
| First published | 2016 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Memoir |
| Type | Non-fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 228 |
| Setting | Stanford, California |
Themes
- Mortality
- Medicine
- Meaning
- Illness
- Fatherhood
Who should read it
Anyone facing serious illness, caring for someone who is, or interested in the ethics and inner life of medicine.
If you liked this, try
- Being Mortal
- Man's Search for Meaning
- The Year of Magical Thinking