Paul Broks

Travels in Neuropsychology

Into the Silent Land

Samuel Beckett

A leading neuropsychologist journeys into the mysteries of his field in a fascinating collection of narratives that explore the world of the neurologically impaired, in such essays as "The Sea and the Almond," about a young woman who agrees to a radical surgery to eliminate her seizures, and "I Think Therefore I Am Dead," about a patient with a debilitating illness without diagnosis or cure. Reprint.

A Novel

Molloy

"When celebrated neuropsychologist Paul Broks's wife died of cancer, it sparked a journey of grief and reflection that traced a lifelong attempt to understand how the brain gives rise to the soul. The result of that journey is a gorgeous, evocative meditation on fate, death, consciousness, and what it means to be human. The Darker the Night, The Brighter the Stars weaves a scientist's understanding of the mind - its logic, its nuance, how we think about what makes a person - with a poet's approach to humanity, that crucial and ever-elusive why. It's a story that unfolds through the centuries, along the path of humankind's constant quest to discover what makes us human, and the answers that consistently slip out of our grasp. It's modern medicine and psychology and ancient tales; history and myth combined; fiction and the stranger truth. But, most importantly, it's Broks' story, grounded in his own most fascinating cases as a clinician--patients with brain injuries that revealed something fundamental about the link between the raw stuff of our bodies and brains and the ineffable selves we take for who we are. Tracing a loose arc of loss, acceptance, and renewal, he unfolds striking, imaginative stories of everything from Schopenhauer to the Greek philosophers to jazz guitarist Pat Martino in order to sketch a multifaceted view of humanness that is as heartbreaking at it is affirming"--

a neuropsychologist's odyssey through consciousness

The darker the night, the brighter the stars

A man's wife dies. What next? The next day is next, and the next, and so on. He smothers his sorrow and gets on with the days. He's a Stoic. Tranquillity is the goal, but his brain won't rest. As a neuropsychologist he has spent a career trying to fathom the human brain but now, he comes to realize, his brain is struggling to make sense of him - probing, doubting, reconstructing. Combining neurological case stories and memoir, and with excursions into speculative fiction and mythology, this is an audaciously original, deeply personal meditation on grief, time and selfhood.

A Neuropsychologist’s Odyssey

The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars

Scura è la notte, luminose le stelle

Into the Silent Land marks the debut of an astonishing new voice. Paul Broks draws on his many years as a neuropsychologist to create a unique mosaic of neurological tales, metaphysical parables and autobiographical reflections. He describes ordinary people whose extraordinary situations have much to teach us about chance, compassion and human resilience in the face of adversity. It is a book that penetrates the reader's imagination and lingers in the memory long after the final page.

Paul Broks

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