Hallucinations

By: Oliver Sacks, Stuart Wilson

Narrated by: Dan Woren

Have you ever seen something that wasn't really there? Heard someone call your name in an empty house? Sensed someone following you and turned around to find nothing?

Hallucinations don't belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. In some conditions, hallucinations can lead to religious epiphanies or even the feeling of leaving one's own body. Humans have always sought such life-changing visions and for thousands of years have used hallucinogenic compounds to achieve them.

In Hallucinations, with his usual elegance, curiosity, and compassion, Dr Oliver Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organisation and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture's folklore and art and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all, a vital part of the human condition.

©1995 Oliver Sacks (P)2012 Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Startling and intriguing." (Sunday Times)

"Oliver Sacks is a neurologist, a man of humane eloquence, and a genuine communicator." (Observer)

"Oliver Sacks is a graceful, lucid and elegant prose stylist. Though perhaps above all, he is the witty, warm, humble and deeply compassionate explorer of how our brains influence our world...fascinating." (Lady)

Please! don't do the voices!

Excellent and interesting topic, as always from Oliver Sacks, but the narrator's faux accents for all of the quotes somewhat spoiled the audio edition. why do you have to quote, say, Freud doing a clumsy hammed-up German accent? or Nabokov sounding like a 2nd rate TV Mexican pretending to be generic eastern European? Instead of giving verisimilitude it sounds like a mockery, detracting from the appreciation of what is being said.

otherwise, good.