Alive

Author Gabriel Weston
Narrator Gabriel Weston
Publisher Random House
Publish Date 6 March 2025
Run Time 7 hours and 4 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Anatomy, Autobiography: science, technology and medicine, Human biology, Medicine: general issues, Memoirs, Popular medicine and health: the human body, Popular science.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

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

What does it mean to live in a body? What stories can our organs tell?

For Gabriel Weston, there was always something missing from the anatomy she was taught at medical school. Medicine teaches us how a body functions, but it doesn't help us navigate the reality of living in one. As she became a surgeon, a mother, and ultimately a patient herself, Weston 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. 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 an anatomy like no other, about our bodies and bonds, the richness and brevity of existence, and the thread of mortality that connect us all.

'A gripping and lyrical tour of the major organs...filled with fascinating facts...there is a lot of tenderness too.' Telegraph

'Weston...(is) such a powerful writer' Evening Standard

'Exceptional, beautiful and absolutely absorbing' Chris van Tulleken, best selling author of ULTRA-PROCESSED PEOPLE

©2025 Gabriel Weston (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

An exceptional, beautiful and absolutely absorbing book. Gabriel Weston is one of the best writers around, and when it comes to medicine and anatomy she redefines the genre. ALIVE is a tour of human life and bodies, but she also brings her own body, in the context of her own life, into an absolutely compelling narrative; sex, pregnancy, asylum seekers, breast implants and hearts - especially the author's own heart, in every sense. It is essential reading if you own a body and should be mandatory for all those who study them.

Chris van Tulleken, author of ULTRA PROCESSED PEOPLE

Superb. It adds humanity back into textbook diagrams of organs, with brilliance and beauty.

Helen Czerski, author of BLUE MACHINE

A book of wonder and appreciation of our fragile bodies

Sarah Moss, author of GHOST WALL

Weston interweaves anatomy with medical history, public health, anecdotes from her surgical practice, and, above all, the warm, pulsing, personal experience of her own living body... What sings from the page is Weston's intoxication with the human form

Lancet

Unusual and gripping... as much about what our bodies mean to us, how they feel to us, as what they do... This bold, humane yet unsettling book...will make you see your own body a bit differently, perhaps change how you feel in your skin.

Guardian

Change relies on people pushing against the heavy door of tradition - which Alive brilliantly persuades us all to do more forcefully - finding new ways to imagine and inhabit the space beneath our skin

Observer

As Gabriel Weston demonstrates in this remarkable book, each organ of our body is a miracle of evolutionary imagination, performing tasks that are outlandishly creative and brilliant. An unusually compelling and illuminating book.

Misha Glenny, author of McMAFIA

Gabriel Weston is an extraordinary writer ... The book is a powerful read... Her descriptions really make the human body come alive.

The Spectator

Refreshingly accessible... Alive comes heartily recommended to anyone wishing to better acquaint themselves with their own fluids

New Statesman

A gripping and lyrical tour of the major organs... filled with fascinating facts... there is a lot of tenderness too.

Telegraph

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