Awakenings (book)
| Awakenings | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Oliver Sacks |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Neurology, psychology |
| Genre(s) | Case history |
| Publication date | 1973, rev. ed. 1990 |
| Pages | 408 (First Edition) |
| ISBN | 0-375-70405-1 |
| OCLC Number | 21910570 |
| Preceded by | Migraine (1970) |
| Followed by | A Leg to Stand On (1984) |
Awakenings is a 1973 non-fiction book by Oliver Sacks. It recounts the life histories of those who had been victims of the 1920s encephalitis lethargica epidemic.[1] 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.
In 1982, Dr. Sacks wrote:
I have become much more optimistic than I was when I first wrote Awakenings, for there has been a significant number of patients who, following the vicissitudes of their first years on L-DOPA, came to do - and still do - extremely well. Such patients have undergone an enduring awakening, and enjoy possibilities of life which had been impossible, unthinkable, before the coming of L-DOPA. [1]
The book inspired a play by Harold Pinter (A Kind of Alaska) in 1982, performed as part of a trilogy of Pinter's plays entitled 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.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Other Places – Listed in "Plays" section of haroldpinter.org. [Includes photograph of playbill, production details, and retyped performance review by Alan Jenkins, originally published in TLS entitled "The Withering of Love", reproduced with permission.]
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