What is it like to try to heal the body when the mind is under attack? In this gripping an illuminating book, a leading neurologist reveals some of the astonishing ways in which a damaged brain can radically alter our lives.

Like Alice in Wonderland, Dr Allan Ropper inhabits a place where absurdities abound: a sportsman who starts spouting gibberish; an undergraduate who suddenly becomes psychotic; a mother who has to decide whether a life looked inside her own head is worth living. How does one begin to treat such cases? Dr Ropper answers this question by taking the reader into a world where lives and minds hang in the balance.