AUDIOBOOK
About
Just before dawn on a Sunday morning, three teenage boys go surfing. While driving home exhausted, the boys are involved in a fatal car accident on a deserted road. Two of the boys are wearing seat belts; one goes through the windshield. The doctors declare him brain-dead shortly after arriving at the hospital, but his heart is still beating.
The Heart takes place over the twenty-four hours surrounding the resulting heart transplant, as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. In gorgeous, ruminative prose, it examines the deepest feelings of everyone involved as they navigate decisions of life and death.
As stylistically audacious as it is emotionally explosive, The Heart mesmerized readers in France, where it has been hailed as the breakthrough work of a new literary star. With the precision of a surgeon and the language of a poet, de Kerangal has made a major contribution to both medicine and literature with an epic tale of grief, hope, and survival.
"From its first, hurtling, paragraph-long sentence, this novel vividly dramatizes each step in the organ-donation process."
"I read The Heart in a single sitting. It is a gripping, deceptively simple tale-a death, a life resurrected-in which you follow along as everyone touched by the events is made to reveal what matters most to them in their lives. I was completely absorbed."
"Stunningly well written, ravishingly translated."
"The Heart is the best medical novel I've read in years. A deep and gripping meditation on the nature of grief. I was mesmerized."
"This novel is an exploration not only of death but of life, of humanity and fragility, 'because the heart is more than the heart.'"
"An exquisite valentine to that engine on which every breath depends…Transcendent."
"This unlike-anything-you've-ever-read novel…shimmers and sears at the same time."
"Shows that narratives around illness and pain can energize the nobler angels of our nature and make for profoundly lovely art."
"The writing in The Heart has a hurtling, onrushing quality… Sam Taylor['s] translation throbs with beauty, sorrow, and an undimmed astonishment at the life of the body."
"[De Kerangal's] writing is uncommonly beautiful and never lacking humanity."
"A sensuous and propulsive novel of tragedy and hope."
The Heart takes place over the twenty-four hours surrounding the resulting heart transplant, as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. In gorgeous, ruminative prose, it examines the deepest feelings of everyone involved as they navigate decisions of life and death.
As stylistically audacious as it is emotionally explosive, The Heart mesmerized readers in France, where it has been hailed as the breakthrough work of a new literary star. With the precision of a surgeon and the language of a poet, de Kerangal has made a major contribution to both medicine and literature with an epic tale of grief, hope, and survival.
"From its first, hurtling, paragraph-long sentence, this novel vividly dramatizes each step in the organ-donation process."
"I read The Heart in a single sitting. It is a gripping, deceptively simple tale-a death, a life resurrected-in which you follow along as everyone touched by the events is made to reveal what matters most to them in their lives. I was completely absorbed."
"Stunningly well written, ravishingly translated."
"The Heart is the best medical novel I've read in years. A deep and gripping meditation on the nature of grief. I was mesmerized."
"This novel is an exploration not only of death but of life, of humanity and fragility, 'because the heart is more than the heart.'"
"An exquisite valentine to that engine on which every breath depends…Transcendent."
"This unlike-anything-you've-ever-read novel…shimmers and sears at the same time."
"Shows that narratives around illness and pain can energize the nobler angels of our nature and make for profoundly lovely art."
"The writing in The Heart has a hurtling, onrushing quality… Sam Taylor['s] translation throbs with beauty, sorrow, and an undimmed astonishment at the life of the body."
"[De Kerangal's] writing is uncommonly beautiful and never lacking humanity."
"A sensuous and propulsive novel of tragedy and hope."