Awakenings (book)

This article is about the 1973 non-fiction book. For the 1990 film, see Awakenings. For other uses, see Awakening (disambiguation).
Awakenings
Front cover: black background, title above author's name, below author's name is quote from Frank Kermode, "This doctor's report... is written in a prose of such beauty that you might well look in vain for its equal among living practitioners of belles lettres."
Front cover of first UK edition,
Duckworth & Co., 1973
AuthorOliver Sacks
LanguageEnglish
SubjectNeurology, psychology
GenreCase history
PublisherDuckworth & Co., 1973
Pelican, 1976
Picador, 1991, 2006, 2010
Publication date
1973, revised 1976 and 1991
Publication placeUnited States
Pages408 (First edition)
ISBN0-375-70405-1
OCLC21910570
Preceded byMigraine (1970) 
Followed byA 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 Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing) in the Bronx, New York.[2] The treatment used the new drug L-DOPA, with the observed effects on the patients' symptoms being generally dramatic but temporary.

In 1982, Sacks wrote:

I have become much more optimistic than I was when I […] 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.[3]

The 1976 edition of the book is dedicated to the memory of Sacks's close friend the 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 death in 1973, Auden wrote, "Have read the book and think it a masterpiece".[4] In 1974 the book won the Hawthornden Prize. [5][6]

  1. ^ MacCarthy, Fiona (5 December 1985), "Travels round a couch", The Times
  2. ^ "Beth Abraham - Centers Health Care Nursing and Rehabilitation". Beth Abraham - Centers Health Care Nursing and Rehabilitation. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  3. ^ Sacks, Oliver (5 October 1999), Awakenings, Knopf Doubleday Publishing, ISBN 0375704051
  4. ^ Sacks, O. (1976), Awakenings, Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, back cover blurb
  5. ^ "Hawthornden Prize - Book awards - LibraryThing". www.librarything.com. Retrieved 2 May 2018.
  6. ^ "Hawthornden Prize". web.mnstate.edu. Retrieved 2 May 2018.