This is an extraordinary account of a group of twenty patients, survivors of the great sleeping-sickness epidemic, which swept the world in the 1920s, and the astonishing, explosive awakening effect they experienced forty years later through a new drug, L-DOPA, administered by Dr Sacks. The stories he tells of these remarkable individuals are moving, often courageous and This is an extraordinary account of a group of twenty patients, survivors of the great sleeping-sickness epidemic, which swept the world in the 1920s, and the astonishing, explosive awakening effect they experienced forty years later through a new drug, L-DOPA, administered by Dr Sacks. The stories he tells of these remarkable individuals are moving, often courageous and sometimes tragic. Now hailed as a medical classic, Awakenings was first published in 1973 and won the Hawthornden Prize of that year. It has since inspired a TV documentary, radio and stage plays and a major feature film. For this revised edition the author has written much new material, including a section about Awakenings on stage and screen. Cover photograph by Volker Sträter