Musicophilia : tales of music and the brain

Oliver Sacks has been hailed by the New York Times as 'one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century'.

In this eagerly awaited new book, the subject of his uniquely literate scrutiny is music: our relationship with it, our facility for it, and what this most universal of passions says about us.

In chapters examining savants and synaesthetics, depressives and musical dreamers, Sacks succeeds not only in articulating the musical experience but in locating it in the human brain.

He shows that music is not simply about sound, but also movement, visualization, and silence.

He follows the experiences of patients suddenly drawn to or suddenly divorced from music. And in so doing he shows, as only he can, both the extraordinary spectrum of human expression and the capacity of music to heal.

Wise, compassionate and compellingly readable, "Musicophilia" promises, like all the best writing, to alter our conception of who we are and how we function, to lend a fascinating insight into the mysteries of the mind, and to show us what it is to be human.