The book recounts the life histories of those who had been victims of the 1920s encephalitis lethargica epidemic. Sacks chronicles his efforts in the late 1960s to help these patients at the Beth Abraham Hospital (now Beth Abraham Health Services) in the Bronx, New York. The treatment used the then-new drug L-DOPA.
The book inspired the 1982 play A Kind of Alaska by Harold Pinter, performed as part of a trilogy of Pinter's plays titled Other Places, and a documentary television episode, the pilot of the British television programme Discovery. It was also made into a 1990 Oscar-nominated film, Awakenings starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.
The 1976 edition of the book was dedicated to the memory of poet W. H. Auden, and bears an extract from Auden's 1969 poem
The Art of Healing:
'Healing',
Papa would tell me,
'is not a science,
but the intuitive art
of wooing Nature.'
Prior to his 1973 death, Auden himself wrote: "Have read the book and think it a masterpiece".
In 1974 the book won the Hawthornden Prize.
Price: R120.00
Edition: Revised edition
Published: 2012
Publishers: Picador
ISBN: 9780330523677
Condition: Paperback in good condition. Very minor shelf wear to the edges of the cover, and a small scuff mark on the cover. Internally in near-pristine condition - very clean and tightly bound.
