Awakenings stars Robert De Niro, Robin Williams, Julie Kavner, Ruth Nelson, John Heard, Penelope Ann Miller, and Max Von Sydow. It was later made into the 1990 film directed by Penny Marshall and was produced by Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker, who first encountered Sacks's book as undergraduates at Yale University and optioned it a few years later. He documents their spiritual and medical obstacles with great care to portray their individual personalities, long suppressed but finally released. Awakenings-which inspired the major motion picture-is the remarkable story of a. Oliver was a British Neurologist, and the book is more like his memoir of all the experiences he had while treating patients who were in a catatonic state for decades.

It is an adaptation of the late Oliver Sacks’ eponymous non-fiction book that was adapted into a screenplay by Steven Zaillian. Sacks came to work at a long-term care facility shortly before the first exciting results with L-dopa and Parkinson's in the late 1960s his patients soon embarked on dramatic, difficult recoveries from up to 50 years of torpor. Oliver Sacks’ acclaimed 1973 book, which relates his astonishing work with victims of the great sleeping-sickness pandemic of 1916-1927, Encephalitis Lethargica. Affordable digital textbook from RedShelf: Awakenings by: Oliver Sacks. Yes, ‘Awakenings’ is based on a true story. These patients, only occasionally able to communicate or move, were nearly all institutionalized for life, their ranks increasing every now and then with similarly afflicted men and women. Hailed by The Washington Post as, 'One of the most beautifully composed and moving works of our time.' The Awakenings tells the story of sleeping-sickness epidemic of 1918 which caused hundreds of survivors to slip into a paralysis with similarities to advanced Parkinson's disease. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “For John Rogers, with best wishes, Oliver Sacks Aug 2015.” Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Awakenings visits Sacks’ journey of perseverance and compassion that brought his ‘frozen’ patients back to being but not to the world they left behind. He begins his novel with a prologue describing and making connections between Parkinsonism and encephalitis lethargica and the aftermath of those who suffered from the sleeping sickness. $1,200.00 Item Number: 95790įirst edition of Sacks’ classic work. In his novel Awakenings, Sacks describes his experiences with post encephalitic patients upon taking L-DOPA.

Awakenings sacks