'Superb, compelling, delightfully labyrinthine' Telegraph

'Fascinating. Reminiscent of Oliver Sacks and the best of medical writing' Abraham Verghese

'A rich and humane work' Gwen Adshead, author of The Devil You Know

'A fascinating journey through the curious capacities of our brains' Elinor Cleghorn, author of Unwell Women

A young woman channelling the voice of the Holy Spirit. A mother whose children have been replaced by changelings. A family cursed by a mysterious inability to sleep. Pria Anand's patients come to her with myriad peculiar symptoms, but they all have something in common: their diagnosis always hinges on a story. Her task as a neurologist is akin to a detective's, piecing together the clues in a patient's account with the tells of their body in order to settle on a diagnosis.

In her gorgeously lyrical, passionate and humane first book, Pria Anand shares stories of her own patients alongside her own experiences as a doctor, a mother and a patient, in order to explore all the bizarre ways in which our brains go awry. Moving from the Boston hospital where she treats her patients, to her childhood years in India, to Isla Providencia in the Caribbean and to Guinea in West Africa, she demonstrates again and again the compelling paradox at the heart of neurology: that the strangest symptoms experienced by any single individual can show us something universal about being human.

"Pria Anand shares the strangeness and sheer wonder of our brains in a testament to the wildness inside us all" - New Scientist, The Best Popular Science Books to Look Forward to in 2025

"A beautifully composed debut by a US neurologist about the peculiar ways individual brains behave and how this can teach us something universal about being human. If you love the work of Oliver Sacks, you'll embrace this as I did" - Bookseller, Editor's Choice

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Superb. Anand writes with circumspection and sensitivity, and with creativity and verve as well. Delightfully labyrinthine ... a compelling tapestry of stories somehow both discrete and happening all at once, its threads overlapping and interweaving with layers hidden underneath