ISBN 0-330-29491-1 (UK pbk)

"Eight of the chapters in this book have already been published: 'The Lost Mariner', 'Hands', 'The Twins', and 'The Autist Artist' in the New York Review of Books (1984 and 1985), and 'Witty Ticcy Ray', 'The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat', and 'Reminiscence' in the London Review of Books (1981, 1983, 1984) -- where the briefer version of the last was called 'Musical Ears'. 'On the Level' was published in The Sciences (1985). 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). Of my four 'Phantoms', the first two were published as 'clinical curios' in the British Medical Journal (1984). Two short pieces are taken from previous books: 'The Man Who Fell out of Bed' is excerpted from A Leg to Stand On , and 'The Visions of Hildegard' from Migraine . The remaining twelve pieces are unpublished and entirely new, and were all written during the autumn and winter of 1984." --Oliver W.Sacks (in the Preface, New York, 10 February 1985).

"The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is populated by a cast as strange as that of the most fantastic fiction. The subject of this strange and wonderful book is what happens when things go wrong with parts of the brain most of us don't know exist... Dr Sacks shows the awesome powers of our mind and just how delicately balanced they have to be." -- (in the Sunday Times , 198?).

"Dr Oliver Sacks's patients are often conspicuous. One man leans like the Tower of Pisa, and has to have a spirit-level built into his spectacles to keep upright. One woman has lost all sense of her own body, and just flops. A distinguished musician, Dr P, develops visual agnosia, and cannot recognize everyday objects: he is the Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, who provides the graphic title of Dr Sacks's latest book. He has a happy knack of turning his casebook into literature." -- (in the Evening Standard , 198?).

"Who is this book for? Who is it not for? It is for everybody who has felt from time to time that certain twinge of self-identity and sensed how easily, at any moment, one might lose it." -- (in The Times , 198?).

Recommended.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
(stage play by Peter Brook... based on the book by Oliver Sacks)

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
(chamber opera based on the book by Oliver Sacks)
"Michael Nyman (a well-known minimalist composer, who wrote the musical score for many of Peter Greenaway's films) composed a chamber opera based on the story of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat . I had the opportunity to attend a performance of this work by the Michael Nyman Ensemble in Barcelona, a few years ago.
"A television version of the opera was produced by I.C.A. Television for Channel 4. It was transmitted on Dec 20, 1987. Produced by Debra Hauer, directed by Chris Rawlence, who also wrote the libretto (for the TV version at least. I'm not sure that he wrote also the libretto for the stage version). I watched this TV feature in 1988 at a festival in Philadelphia (it was the first time I heard about Oliver Sacks)." --Joan Ubeda, Producer/Director - TV3/Televisió de Catalunya - Barcelona, Spain (in a personal e-mail, 18 January 1997).