Coming Up for Air

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Three extraordinary lives intertwine across oceans and time.

On the banks of the River Seine in 1899, a young woman takes her final breath before plunging into the icy water. Although she does not know it, her decision will set in motion an astonishing chain of events. It will lead to 1950s Norway, where a grieving toy-maker is on the cusp of a transformative invention, all the way to present-day Canada where a journalist, battling a terrible disease, risks everything for one last chance to live.

Taking inspiration from a remarkable true story, Coming Up for Air is a bold, richly imagined novel about the transcendent power of storytelling and the immeasurable impact of every human life.

© Sarah Leipciger 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Critics Review

  • Coming Up For Air confirms Sarah Leipciger as a major talent. A meditation on mortality and our will to survive and save, it’s really bold in its weaving of three ingeniously linked storylines and rich in sensuous detail and vivid characterisation. I can’t wait for her next.

    Patrick Gale

  • A stunning, stirring story told with exceptional skill and rare beauty.

    Terri White

  • Sarah Leipciger captures the nature of solitude and stillness in a way that no other writer does. THE MOUNTAIN CAN WAIT was a wonder. COMING UP FOR AIR expands her range even further, exploring that eerie shoreline where land and ocean meet, where breathing becomes drowning, and life teeters on the very edge.

    Mark Haddon

  • An extraordinary, three-century braid of air and water: the way we float, the way we drown, the way we surface again against the odds.

    Francis Spufford

  • Vivid, evocative, moving. I loved it

    Claire Fuller

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