A Second Wind: A Memoir

Soon to be a major motion picture—The Upside—starring Bryan Cranston, Kevin Hart, and Nicole Kidman.

Born with wealth and privilege, Philippe Pozzo di Borgo was not generally someone in the habit of asking for help. Then, in 1993, right on the heels of his wife’s diagnosis of a terminal illness, a paragliding accident left him a quadriplegic. He was forty-two-years-old and unable to do anything—even feed himself—without the help of another person.

Passing his days hidden behind the high walls of his townhouse, after his paralysis Philippe found himself isolated and depressed. The only person who seemed unaffected by Philippe’s condition was someone who had been marginalized his entire life—Abdel, the unemployed, outspoken Algerian immigrant who would become his unlikely caretaker. In between dramas and jokes, he sustained Philippe’s life for the next ten years.

A Second Wind, the basis for the upcoming major motion picture The Upside, is the inspiring true story of two men who refused to ask for help, and then wound up helping each other.