Harold Pinter based his play A Kind of Alaska on this book. Also the basis of a feature film (US) starring Robin Williams.
"A very early account of one of my patients -- the 'original' of Rose R. in Awakenings and of Harold Pinter's Deborah in A Kind of Alaska , inspired by that book -- is to be found in 'Incontinent Nostalgia' (originally published as 'Incontinent Nostalgia induced by L-Dopa' in the Lancet of Spring 1970)." --Oliver W.Sacks.
"This book is a neurologist's account of his experience with a so-called miracle drug from the epidemic of sleeping-sickness which swept the world in the 1920s. Dr.Sacks writes beautifully and with exceptional subtlety and penetration into both the state of mind of his patients and the nature of illness in general." --A.Alvarez (in the Observer , 19??).
"...About how he administered L-Dopa to sleeping-sickness patients and miraculously cured them, albeit temporarily. The book was also the basis of a play by Harold Pinter, A Kind of Alaska ." --Andrew Duncan (in Radio Times , 16-22 November 1996).
"A masterpiece." --W.H.Auden.
Highly recommended.
