Non-fiction pick: When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (Bodley Head, £12.99)

In this memoir, Paul Kalanithi was in his final year of training as a neurosurgeon when he was confronted with a CT scan which revealed a diagnosis of ‘cancer, wildly disseminated’; the scan was his own and in this remarkable book, he faces up to his own mortality, discusses the moral dimension of his job, as well as his professional ambitions, and attempts to make sense of a life about to be unexpectedly curtailed.

It’s elegantly constructed, as befits a man who had a lifelong passion for reading and writing, and heartbreakingly honest too, with unflinching reflections on all the beloved people he must leave behind, and all the things left undone.