Into the Silent Land - Hardcover
Paul Broks draws on his 15 years as a neuropsychologist to present a narrative about memory and personal identity. Macabre yet humane, unsettling but affecting, he writes about the experiences of his patients, and his experience as their psychologist. The stories are those of ordinary people whose extraordinary illnesses have much to say to everyone about who and what we are. They are also about chance, compassion, human fallibility and eccentricity.
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Review:
Like some aberrant surgeon, neuropsychologist Paul Broks' debut book, Into the Silent Land peels apart the skull and declines to cauterise. We are plunged straight into the macabre world that Broks inhabits--an infernal and tragic look at people with bits of their brains missing. We meet Michael and Stuart, textbook cases of equal and opposite brain wreckage; Jeanie, who believes herself already dead and Robert's tumour that "reset his personality dials". But this is no travelling freak show. Broks is careful and gentle with his subjects, recognising the humanity in each, which turns Into the Silent Land into a rare work of compelling, cerebral genius.
Review:
Broks is as much a part of this book as any of his patients. He turns the glare of his analysis on himself as intensely as he does on any of his other "characters", revealing his own deepest concerns. He also includes professional anecdotes and other interesting phenomena that will be familiar to students of consciousness--phantom limbs, out-of-body experiences, ghosts, emotional response and the social instinct.
He goes on to explore his doubts as to whether neuropsychology can truly attain its stated aim of understanding consciousness. But despite his deft touch and elegant, sparse style, toward the end he begins to leap fretfully from subject to subject before coming to an abrupt end. Nevertheless Into the Silent Land is as unsettling, mentally engaging and unusual a book as you are likely to read for some time. --Dan Green
'A beautifully written addition to brain literature... will mesmerise anyone curious about the mass of goo inside our heads.' -- Time Out, Book of the Week
'Beautifully written and beautifully thought through' -- Professor Steven Rose
'Into the Silent Land is a small, strange, beautiful gem... Broks is as much poet as scientist. An indelible book' -- Atul Gawande, author of Complications
'Into the Silent Land is an inquiry into the relationship between the brain and the personality... Beautifully written' -- Will Cohu, Daily Telegraph
'Paul Broks is set to be the new Oliver Sacks' -- Ian Finlayson, The Times
'Beautifully written and beautifully thought through' -- Professor Steven Rose
'Into the Silent Land is a small, strange, beautiful gem... Broks is as much poet as scientist. An indelible book' -- Atul Gawande, author of Complications
'Into the Silent Land is an inquiry into the relationship between the brain and the personality... Beautifully written' -- Will Cohu, Daily Telegraph
'Paul Broks is set to be the new Oliver Sacks' -- Ian Finlayson, The Times
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherWeidenfeld & Nicolson
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 0297646176
- ISBN 13 9780297646174
- BindingHardcover
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