Borrowed Stories: Facing Cancer with Culture – from Breaking Bad to The Divine Comedy

by Ewan Bowlby

Ewan Bowlby’s research and writing uncovers a crucial way of improving the lives of anyone facing cancer’s consequences











Demonstrates that through engaging with all kinds of culture, a crucial way of improving the lives of anyone facing the consequences of cancer can be found




An honest, moving and inspiring memoir about living with cancer and approaching death








When Ewan Bowlby was diagnosed with a brain tumour at the age of 17, he tackled the consequences head on. In the last decade of his life, as cancer developed, he recorded his experience with great honesty. But much more than that, he discovered a crucial way of improving the lives of anyone facing cancer’s consequences. Ewan believed ‘evidence-based medicine’ had left ‘a lost sense of humanity’. Through all kinds of culture – whether author John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, Alexander Solzhenitsn's Cancer Ward or TV's Breaking Bad – everyone could find new ways of responding to such devastating illness. He revealed how sentimentality, even humour filled the huge hole left by cold clinical language. A brilliant student, he tested his ideas everywhere from top universities to groups of patients from every background. This book is Ewan’s story of living with cancer and approaching death, and his unique insight into how everyone caught up in that world can learn to think differently about what they are facing.

256 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 30, 2025