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Awakenings by Oliver Sacks

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Awakenings

Publisher
Pan Macmillan
Publish Date
12 July 2018
Run Time
13 hours 8 minutes
Format
Audiobook

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What to expect

'The story of a disease that plunged its victims into a prison of viscous time, and the drug that catapulted them out of it' – Guardian

Hailed as a medical classic, and the subject of a major feature film as well as radio and stage plays and various TV documentaries, Awakenings by Oliver Sacks is the extraordinary account of a group of twenty patients.

Rendered catatonic by the sleeping-sickness epidemic that swept the world just after the First World War, all twenty had spent forty years in hospital: motionless and speechless; aware of the world around them, but exhibiting no interest in it – until Dr Sacks administered the then-new drug, L-DOPA, which caused them, temporarily, to awake from their decades-long slumber . . .

Critics Review

  • A brilliant and humane book.

    Observer

  • It makes you aware of what a knife edge we live on.

    Doris Lessing

  • Not only a collection of astonishing case histories, Awakenings is also a memoir, a moral essay and a romance. It is a work of genius.

    Washington Post

User Reviews

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Details

Author
Oliver Sacks
Narrator
Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
Duration
13 hours 8 minutes
Release Date
12 July 2018
ISBN
9781509895663
Format
Audiobook
Publisher
Pan Macmillan
Genre
Essays, Popular psychology, Neurology and clinical neurophysiology, Neurosciences

Synopsis

'The story of a disease that plunged its victims into a prison of viscous time, and the drug that catapulted them out of it' – Guardian Hailed as a medical classic, and the subject of a major feature film as well as radio and stage plays and various TV documentaries, Awakenings by Oliver Sacks is the extraordinary account of a group of twenty patients.Rendered catatonic by the sleeping-sickness epidemic that swept the world just after the First World War, all twenty had spent forty years in hospital: motionless and speechless; aware of the world around them, but exhibiting no interest in it – until Dr Sacks administered the then-new drug, L-DOPA, which caused them, temporarily, to awake from their decades-long slumber . . .

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