Awakenings stars Robert De Niro, Robin Williams, Julie Kavner, Ruth Nelson, John Heard, Penelope Ann Miller, and Max Von Sydow.Hailed as a medical classic, and the subject of a major feature film as well as radio and stage plays, and various TV documentaries, Awakenings is the extraordinary account of a group of twenty patients. It was later made into the 1990 film directed by Penny Marshall and was produced by Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker, who first encountered Sacks's book as undergraduates at Yale University and optioned it a few years later.

He documents their spiritual and medical obstacles with great care to portray their individual personalities, long suppressed but finally released. Sacks came to work at a long-term care facility shortly before the first exciting results with L-dopa and Parkinson's in the late 1960s his patients soon embarked on dramatic, difficult recoveries from up to 50 years of torpor. These patients, only occasionally able to communicate or move, were nearly all institutionalized for life, their ranks increasing every now and then with similarly afflicted men and women. Hailed by The Washington Post as, 'One of the most beautifully composed and moving works of our time.' The Awakenings tells the story of sleeping-sickness epidemic of 1918 which caused hundreds of survivors to slip into a paralysis with similarities to advanced Parkinson's disease. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, 'For John Rogers, with best wishes, Oliver Sacks Aug 2015.' Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. The playright Harold Pinter was also sufficiently inspired by the work to adapt it into a one-act play, A Kind of Alaska, which premiered at the Cottesloe theatre (now Dorfman) in 1982, starring Judi Dench.įirst edition of Sacks' classic work. Auden wrote, 'have read the book and think it a masterpiece'. Having read the book in prior to his death in 1973, W. The image shows a photograph taken on Sacks' City Island home in New York.

The book was subsequently made into a film starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, with this paperback cover echoing the theatrical release poster. 3/91.' First published in 1973, Awakenings was one of Sacks' breakthrough works, which chronicled the life histories of those who had been victims of the 1920s encephalitis lethargica epidemic. First paperback edition thus, inscribed by Oliver to his niece: 'For Liz, with love, Olly.

, x-xxxix,, 4-408 with a few leaves after black and white photographs author's gift inscription in purple felt pen to title light creasing to lower panel paper stock evenly toned, as is common, else near-fine.

Awakenings by Oliver Sacks