On the Move: A Life

'A memoir of glorious, unflinching honesty' Guardian

When Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote: 'Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far'. It is now abundantly clear that Sacks has never stopped going. With unbridled honesty and humour, Sacks writes about the passions that have driven his life - from motorcycles and weight lifting to neurology and poetry. He writes about his love affairs, both romantic and intellectual; his guilt over leaving his family to come to America; his bond with his schizophrenic brother; and the writers and scientists - W. H. Auden, Gerald M. Edelman, Francis Crick - who have influenced his work. On the Move is the story of a brilliantly unconventional physician and writer, a man who has illuminated the many ways that the brain makes us human.

'Deeply moving . . . a gift to his readers - of erudition, sympathy and an abiding understanding of the joys, trials and consolations of the human condition' New York Times

'Coursing through On the Move is his constant sense of joy in the natural world, in scientific epiphanies, and people in all their oddity . . . one of the most singular and inspiring men of our time' Independent