Alive: Our Bodies and the Richness and Brevity of Existence

A profound and provocative journey through the human body from a surgeon and award-winning writer.

What does it mean to live in a body? For Gabriel Weston, there was always something missing from the anatomy she was taught at medical school. She’d forged an unconventional path, first studying humanities and getting an entry-level job in publishing, before a spark of inspiration set her on the path to becoming a doctor.

Medicine teaches us how a body functions, but it doesn't help us navigate the reality of living in one. As Weston became a surgeon, a mother, and ultimately a patient herself, she found herself grappling with the gap between scientific knowledge and unfathomable complexity of human experience.

In this captivating exploration of the body, Weston dissolves the boundaries that usually divide surgeon and patient, pushing beyond the limit of what science has to tell us about who we are and leaning on her roots in the humanities. Focusing on our individual organs, not just under the intense spotlight of the operating theatre, but in the central role they play in the stories of our lives, a fuller and more human picture of our bodies emerges: more fragile, frightening and miraculous than we could have imagined.

Intimate, penetrating and original, Alive is about our bodies and bonds, the richness and brevity of existence, and the thread of mortality that connect us all.

About the Author

Gabriel Weston is the author of Direct Red: A Surgeon’s Story, which won the PEN Ackerley Prize and was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, and a novel, Dirty Work. She is a medical presenter for the BBC, writes reviews for Lancet and The Telegraph, works as a part-time surgeon and lives in London with her husband and four children.