Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Genre: Autobiography

My dad came across a tweet by Mr. Bill Gates a few weeks back, praising this book. He was so moved by the tweet and the review of the book by Mr. Gates, that he decided to immediately buy the book for me. Although, this might be one of those rare occasions where he actually read the book before I did!

This book is about a highly accomplished and ambitious man who had trained in neurosurgery for many years, and just as he was about to finish his residency, found out that he had terminal lung cancer. As someone that went to multiple elite schools, pursued degrees in literature, psychology and neurosurgery, and always wanted to write a book, Paul decided to write the book about his own journey and life lessons before his disease robbed him of the opportunity to do so.

After reading the book for the first time a few days ago, I was confused about what the message behind the autobiography was. Doesn’t everyone die eventually? Isn’t every death tragic? Why does this particular story matter? This was partly the reason that I did not write a review of this book right away; I couldn’t decide what the book was trying to convey.

As I pondered it further, I realized that this book was really about Paul’s pursuit of the greater good and how he dealt with unfinished business. An obviously exceptional student, with a list of enviable accomplishments, about to finish the first critical chapter of his journey, only to find out that his will be an unfinished dream.

The author portrayed exceptionally well his struggle between doing what he loved, and making sure that he was doing it well despite his deteriorating condition holding him back. A lot of Paul’s friends had dropped out of medical school, unable to handle the stress that came with becoming a surgeon, but Paul had embraced the challenge only to have a terminal disease rob him of a very bright future.

When Paul first found out he had cancer, he had initially wanted to continue his residency because he had worked so hard for it. Being a neurosurgeon was difficult enough but performing complex surgeries with debilitating stage four lung cancer was no ordinary undertaking. The internal tussle that Paul went through before finally accepting that he could no longer work was heartbreaking. The book does an amazing job of not only describing his professional struggles, but also his personal ones in parallel. Lucy, his supportive partner, stood by his side, as they tackled one difficult decision after another including one about starting a family while Paul was terminally ill.

The amazing story that Paul Kalanithi writes about finding his way in the world and learning to cope with having everything taken away from him is truly one to read. As Mr. Gates so aptly pens – “All lives have equal value. But some deaths seem particularly cruel.”

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If you would like to read this book (YES!), you can purchase it here: When Breath Becomes Air

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Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, primarily known as Maxim Gorky, was a Russian author who wrote during the realist era. His writings mainly focused on political topics and strongly opposed the Tsar, which was uncommon for writers of that era. Some other peculiar features of Gorky’s works included the fact that, beyond being politically unique, they were simply considered “strange” for his time period.

Gorky, by many authors is currently considered a Marxist Feminist, because a lot of his works hinged on the idea that for women to truly be equal to men, they would have to first revolt against the government and eradicate capitalism in its entirety. Only then would they be able to free themselves from the oppression of society. This idea was prevalent in his short story titled “Mother”, where he discussed the role of women, especially the elderly, in revolutions.

I don’t wholeheartedly agree with the idea that Gorky was a Marxist-Feminist, because in a lot of his stories, such as “Twenty-six Men and A Girl”, Gorky seems to emphasize the idea that women will always be considered inferior to men, no matter what sort of world we live in.

Here’s an excerpt of the essay that I wrote on this topic:

        Gorky shows that even in a world where men are working and a girl has the freedom to visit them every day, she will still be objectified by them and has no capacity to be subject to change. This idea is shown when Gorky talks about the perpetual state of the world in his stories, with phrases that reference the fact that the world is going nowhere, and that people being stuck in their professions and social classes is always inevitable. This is a rather large contrast from Marxist-feminism because here Gorky is accepting the fact that women will never be accepted as equals to men, rather than encouraging them to reject capitalist ideals because that is what is imprisoning them in reality.

The Gorky stories that I read included: Twenty-six Men and A Girl, Karamora, Notch, and The Affair of The Clasps. I also read one of Gorky’s essays titled “Soviet Intellectuals”, which discussed the conflict between the bourgeois and the proletariat, which were the two largest social classes at the time. He also impressed upon the reader the importance of perspective- the contrast between a hummock view and a point of view.

All in all, Gorky was one of the most unusual writers of his time where he voiced unpopular opinions and criticized governments and their ideals, and although his writing was under wide criticism, some of his ideas did shape literary history.

If you would like to read these stories, you can purchase them here: The Collected Short Stories of Maxim Gorky