The Island of the Colour-blind

Description

Always fascinated by islands, Oliver Sacks is drawn to the Pacific by reports of Pingelap, where one in twelve inhabitants is born totally colourblind; and to Guam, where he investigates a puzzling, paralysing neurodegenerative disorder that has affected islanders there for over a century.

Oliver Sacks is a physician and the author of ten previous books, including most recently, Musicophilia. He lives in New York City, where he is Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University. He is the first, and only, Columbia University Artist, and is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire.

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 *