Through twelve staggeringly compelling and beautifully crafted linked case studies neurologist
Pria Anand explores the myriad ways our brains both hide and reveal the world and ourselves
from us. Taking inspiration from the legendary work of Oliver Sacks Dr. Anand introduces us to
some of her patients exploring the fascinating continuum of neurological disorder she's
treated and researched from a fatal insomnia that curses a family over generations to an
attack of encephalitis that convinces an overachieving perfect student that she's channeling
the voice of the Holy Spirit. With a timely intervention on the existing canon of writing about
the brain Dr. Anand centres the experiences of women with neurologic illnesses which are so
often marginalized and invites us to consider the vulnerability complexity and power of our
body's most mysterious organ. Interwoven with these gripping stories Dr. Anand chronicles her
own experiences of stress physicality and exhaustion that pushed her brain to its limits
throughout her journey from resident to doctor as she navigated pregnancy childbirth and
early motherhood along the way. This personal anchoring invites us to consider that as Dr.
Anand eloquently puts it "there is a continuity between brains in extremis and the
peculiarities of human brains even in the absence of disease that neurologic symptoms are
metonymic for the human experience in a way that extends far beyond the confines of particular
rare diseases and that the experience of neurologic disease-the mythologies it inspires the
fallacies it impels-is universal."
