In this strikingly original and profound work of non-fiction, the author spends six months in a neonatal unit exploring the mysterious inner life of newborns and the lasting imprint of our earliest days.

A baby's first cry announces a new life. But for some newborns, rushed from the delivery room to the neonatal intensive care unit, their survival hangs in the balance.

What does it mean to enter the world before you're ready? And what can we truly know of newborn life-a time none of us can remember, yet all of us have lived?

Seeking answers, journalist Clémentine Goldszal spends six months inside the neonatal intensive care unit at Necker Hospital for Sick Children in Paris. There, she witnesses the daily dramas of the ward: babies fighting for breath, doctors and nurses pushing the limits of medicine in an overstretched healthcare system and parents learning to love a child through the walls of an incubator.

Tender and deeply humane, Newborn offers a rare glimpse into a world few of us ever see. It is both a portrait of those devoted to caring for the smallest and most vulnerable lives, and a visionary attempt to give voice to the mysterious inner life of the baby.