Island of the Colour-blind

Always fascinated by islands, Oliver Sacks is drawn to the Pacific by reports of the tiny atoll of Pingelap, with its isolated community of islanders born totally colour-blind; and to Guam, where he investigates a puzzling paralysis endemic there for a century. Along the way, he re-encounters the beautiful, primitive island cycad trees - and these become the starting point for a meditation on time and evolution, disease and adaptation, and islands both real and metaphorical.

Sacks is rightly renowned for his empathy...anyone with a taste for the exotic will find this beautifully written book highly engaging - Anthony Storr, Sunday Times

Dr Sacks is an elegant and beguiling writer, and when he describes a condition such as achromatopsia (total colour blindness), he is not content merely to describe it from he outside, he tries to imagine what the world is like to a person with the condition. - Sunday Telegraph

There is no one at the present time who writes like Oliver Sacks...He is a superb clinician who can take a seemingly arid and obscure medical condition, and convert it into a moving , personal odyssey, a testament of tenacity, courage and will - Anthony Clare, Literary Review

Cover Photograph: Heather Angel