Awakenings (book)

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.[2] 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[3]) in the Bronx, New York. The treatment used the then-new drug L-DOPA.

This article is about the 1973 non-fiction book. For the 1990 film, see Awakenings. For other uses, see Awakening (disambiguation).
Awakenings
Front cover of first UK edition,
Duckworth & Co., 1973[1]
AuthorOliver Sacks
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectNeurology, psychology
GenreCase history
PublisherDuckworth & Co., 1973
Pelican, 1976
Picador, 1991, 2006, 2010
Publication date
1973, revised 1976 and 1991
Pages408 (First Edition)
ISBN0-375-70405-1
OCLC21910570
Preceded byMigraine (1970) 
Followed byA Leg to Stand On (1984) 

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.[4]

The book inspired the 1982 play A Kind of Alaska by Harold Pinter, performed as part of a trilogy of Pinter's plays titled 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. Tobias Picker composed a ballet inspired by Awakenings for the Rambert Dance Company, which was premiered by Rambert in Salford, UK in 2010;[5] Picker, commissioned by The Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, also made an opera of Awakenings with a libretto by Aryeh Lev Stollman.[6]

The 1976 edition of the book is dedicated to the memory of 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 1973 death, Auden himself wrote: "Have read the book and think it a masterpiece".[7]

In 1974 the book won the Hawthornden Prize. [8][9]

References
  1. "Awakenings by Sacks, Oliver". 2015. Retrieved 30 August 2015.
  2. MacCarthy, Fiona (5 December 1985), "Travels round a couch", The Times
  3. "Beth Abraham - Centers Health Care Nursing and Rehabilitation". Beth Abraham - Centers Health Care Nursing and Rehabilitation. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  4. Sacks, Oliver, Awakenings, Amazon
  5. "Rambert Dance Company: The Making of Awakenings". The Ballet Bag. Retrieved 2016-12-14.
  6. "'Awakenings' Opera Premiering In St. Louis Came From Couple's 'Mutual Inspiration'". St. Louis Public Radio. 2020-02-13. Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  7. Sacks, O. (1976), Awakenings, Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, back cover blurb
  8. "Hawthornden Prize - Book awards - LibraryThing". www.librarything.com. Retrieved 2 May 2018.
  9. "Hawthornden Prize". web.mnstate.edu. Retrieved 2 May 2018.
  • 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 The Times Literary Supplement entitled "The Withering of Love", reproduced with permission.
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