The Island of the Colour-blind

‘Sacks is rightly renowned for his empathy . . . anyone with a taste for the exotic will find this beautifully written book highly engaging’ – The Sunday TimesJourney into the unknown with the bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Always fascinated by islands, neurologist Oliver Sacks is drawn to the Pacific by reports of the tiny atoll of Pingelap, with its isolated community of islanders born totally colour-blind; and to Guam, where he investigates a puzzling paralysis endemic there for a century. Along the way, he re-encounters the beautiful, primitive island cycad trees – and these become the starting point for a meditation on time and evolution, disease and adaptation, and islands both real and metaphorical in The Island of the Colour-Blind. Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.