Cuando solo queda aire / When Breath Becomes Air

A los treinta y seis años y a punto de cumplir una década trabajando como neurocirujano, Paul Kalathini fue diagnosticado con un cáncer de pulmón en etapa IV.

Un día, atendía a pacientes terminales y, al otro, era él quien luchaba por sobrevivir. Cuando solo queda aire narra la transformación de Kalanithi: de ser un ingenuo estudiante de medicina a convertirse en un reconocido neurocirujano y, finalmente, en un paciente y joven padre que enfrentaba su propia mortalidad.

¿Qué hace que vivir valga la pena? ¿Cómo enfrentas la ausencia de futuro? ¿Qué significa tener un hijo, nutrir una nueva vida mientras la tuya se desvanece? Estas son algunas de las preguntas que plantea esta exquisita y conmovedora memoria. Paul Kalanithi murió en marzo de 2015, mientras trabajaba en este libro, pero sus palabras viven como una guía y un regalo para todos.

Cuando solo queda aire es una reflexión inolvidable y una afirmación de la vida frente al insondable desafío de la muerte.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION


The 10th anniversary of When Breath Becomes Air is a moment to celebrate a book that has touched millions of lives.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD

This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question, What makes a life worth living?


“Unmissable . . . Finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, People, NPR, The Washington Post, Slate, Harper’s Bazaar, Time Out New York, Publishers Weekly, BookPage
An Oprah Daily Best Nonfiction Book of the Past Two Decades • A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir