From the bestselling author of Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Musicophilia. Now in the Picador Collection.

In An Anthropologist on Mars Oliver Sacks uses case studies to illustrate the myriad ways in which neurological conditions can affect our sense of self, our experience of the world, and how we relate to those around us.

Writing with his trademark blend of scientific rigour and human compassion, he describes patients such as the colour-blind painter or the surgeon with compulsive tics that disappear in the operating theatre; patients for whom disorientation and alienation – but also adaptation – are inescapable facts of life.

'An inexhaustible tourist at the farther reaches of the mind, Sacks presents, in sparse, unsentimental prose, the stories of seven of his patients. The result is as rich, vivid and compelling as any collection of short fictional stories' – Independent on Sunday

Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

"Writing simply and beautifully, Sacks uses individual case histories to reveal the infinite complexities of the human mind" - Daily Mail

"Sacks' great gift is his capacity to place himself in the position of his subjects, to see the world the way they see it and to empathize with their condition with great compassion but without patronage or pity" - The Daily Telegraph

"An inexhaustible tourist at the farther reaches of the mind, Sacks presents, in sparse, unsentimental prose, the stories of seven of his patients. The result is as rich, vivid and compelling as any collection of short fictional stories" - Independent on Sunday