A gripping investigation into an extraordinary medical phenomenon from the prize-winning author of It's Not All In Your Head.
Dr Suzanne O'Sullivan has been a consultant in neurology since 2004, first working at the Royal London Hospital and now as a consultant in clinical neurophysiology and neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. She specializes in the investigation of complex epilepsy and also has an active interest in psychogenic disorders. Suzanne's first book, It's All in Your Head, won both the Wellcome Book Prize and the Royal Society of Biology Book Prize and her critically acclaimed Brainstorm was published in 2018.
One of the most intriguing and provocative books of the year
*Guardian Best Science Books of the Year*
O’Sullivan doesn’t offer easy answers. She just shows us, with
wonderful compassion and the minimum of judgment, the ways in which
people across the world have manifested symptoms that have helped
them through – or beyond – painful situations . . . It is, in every
sense, mind-blowing.
*Daily Telegraph*
O'Sullivan travels the world collecting fascinating stories of
culture-bound syndromes, which she relays with nuance and
sensitivity.
*New Statesman*
A bracing read, a little like a cold shower on a hot summer’s
day.
*Daily Mail*
A study of diseases that we sometimes say are 'all in the mind',
and an explanation of how unfair that characterisation is.
*The Times Books of the Year*
The stories are remarkable. But no less remarkable is O'Sullivan's
revelation of the way we all absorb cultural expectations of
illness and reject or exhibit symptoms in response . . . Her
enlightening and sympathetic book should be required reading for
all doctors - and for all patients.
*Literary Review*
To compare any book to a Sacks is unfair, but this one lives up to
it. Not because it is alluringly freakish, but because it is so
compassionate, and so driven by deep curiosity about the human
psyche. I finished it feeling thrillingly unsettled, and wishing
there was more.
*Sunday Times*
By making social problems visible on the body, O’Sullivan believes,
these conditions allow voiceless people to make
themselves heard. Perhaps this eloquent and convincing book will be
the start of making people in authority listen, make change and
help.
*Guardian*
O’Sullivan’s beautifully written book interweaves the stories of
those afflicted in this way around the world, in a travelogue of
illness that is ultimately a travelogue of our own irrational,
suggestible minds . . . It is a measure of how effective O’Sullivan
is at describing the dilemmas and difficulties of treating
psychosomatic conditions that, by the end, a visit to a witch
doctor begins to feel like the most sensible medical intervention
in the book.
*The Times*
Each case study peels back the rigid framework of modern medicine
and demands that we reframe our understanding of what is and isn't
illness. This is a progressive book that doesn't hold back on
criticising the dogged diagnostic obsessions of Western
medicine.
*Geographical*
No one doubts that there is something genuinely wrong with these
children, yet medicine cannot locate it. O' Sullivan tours the
clusters to see if she can do any better.
*Strong Words*
In this fascinating book, O’Sullivan makes a case for empathy.
*iNews*
In my view the best science writer around – a true descendant of
Oliver Sacks.
*Sathnam Sanghera, author of The Boy with the Topknot*
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