The Island of the Colour-blind
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Pan Macmillan
Published:5th Jul '12
Should be back in stock very soon
'Sacks is rightly renowned for his empathy . . . anyone with a taste for the exotic will find this beautifully written book highly engaging' – Sunday Times
Always fascinated by islands, Oliver Sacks is drawn to the Pacific by reports of the tiny atoll of Pingelap, with its isolated community of islanders born totally colour-blind; and to Guam, where he investigates a puzzling paralysis endemic there for a century. Along the way, he re-encounters the beautiful, primitive island cycad trees – and these become the starting point for a meditation on time and evolution, disease and adaptation, and islands both real and metaphorical in The Island of the Colour-Blind.
This is a wonderful book, made better by Sacks' exceptionally gentle descriptions of patients. He also captures the unimaginable sadness of the Pacific. * Spectator *
There is no one at the present time who writes like Oliver Sacks . . . He is a superb clinician who can take a seemingly arid and obscure medical condition, and convert it into a moving, personal odyssey, a testament of tenacity, courage and will. * Literary Review *
Dr Sacks is an elegant and beguiling writer, and when he describes a condition such as achromatopsia (total colour-blindness), he is not content merely to describe it from the outside, but he tries to imagine what the world is like to a person with the condition. * Sunday Telegraph *
ISBN: 9780330526104
Dimensions: 197mm x 130mm x 28mm
Weight: 268g
384 pages