Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Awakenings

By: Oliver Sacks
Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

Hailed as a medical classic, and the subject of a major feature film as well as radio and stage plays and various TV documentaries, Awakenings by Oliver Sacks is the extraordinary account of a group of 20 patients.

Rendered catatonic by the sleeping-sickness epidemic that swept the world just after the First World War, all 20 had spent 40 years in hospital - motionless and speechless; aware of the world around them but exhibiting no interest in it - until Dr Sacks administered the then-new drug L-DOPA, which caused them, temporarily, to awake from their decades-long slumber.

©1973 Oliver Sacks (P)2011 Audible, Inc
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

Blindness cover art
Bernoulli's Fallacy cover art
Orwell: The Essays cover art
The Middlepause cover art
Every Third Thought cover art
The Mind of a Murderer cover art
Dr. Mutter's Marvels cover art
Ten Drugs cover art
Why Isn't My Brain Working? cover art
A Beautiful Mind cover art
Asleep cover art
My Year Off cover art
When the Air Hits Your Brain cover art
An Unquiet Mind cover art
The Lobotomist's Wife cover art
Suggestible You cover art

Critic reviews

"The story of a disease that plunged its victims into a prison of viscous time, and the drug that catapulted them out of it." (The Guardian)

What listeners say about Awakenings

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    27
  • 4 Stars
    12
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    21
  • 4 Stars
    5
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    19
  • 4 Stars
    9
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

An incredible story

What a story to tell! I’m redo my interesting and well written. I loved how he looked at the whole scenario from multiple, and not just a medicinal perspective. A great listen/read.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Mesmerising

Amazing achievement!
The nature of the book requires active listening and can at times be a hard listen, that said it's definitely one that adds a nuance to the world as you know it.
You walk away feeling as though you too had visited the patients and seen the miraculous awakenings of Mount Carmel :)

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Incredible!

This is the best of Oliver Sacks works that I have read so far. So deep, so complete..personality, physiology and pathology brought together.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Enjoyably extended from the original, well read

Really enjoyed the book and the revisitations at the end of it, especially those concerned with the film and stage adaptation of Awakenings.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!