How can a random event become an opportunity to think about the time we have, the actions we have taken and the relationships we have neglected? This book is about life, how we would like to deal with it and how we actually do cope with it.

A trivial accident, a fall and a broken arm: life seems to give us a warning and suggest that everything we had considered stable, robust, established, could fall apart like a humerus hitting the sharp edge of a white step. And it is not only the head of the humerus that falls apart, but sometimes life itself. More generally, it may happen that everything we had considered stable and established collapses. It may happen that we realise that perhaps we have not yet learnt how to live. But it is precisely at that moment that it is worth trying again, hoping that the wind will pick up, bringing us out of the doldrums we have got ourselves into. Living, surviving, pre-living, living together are the stations through which this book takes us through to reflect on a mélange of topics revolving around life. From Montaigne to Heidegger, from Nietzsche to Derrida, from Shakespeare to Yourcenar, from Fitzgerald to Hemingway: all this and much more is captured in this unique, exciting and thought-provoking book.