The Island of the Colorblind

By Oliver Sacks

Book Overview

Part travelogue, part autobiography, part medical mystery, this moving book by the "poet laureate of medicine" (The New York Times) and bestselling author of Awakenings takes us to a tiny Pacific atoll and the island of Guam to explore the genesis of disease, the wonders of botany, and the complexities of being human.

"Sacks's total immersion in island life makes this luminous, beautifully written report a wonderous voyage of discovery. As a travel writer, Sacks ranks with Paul Theroux and Bruce Chatwin. As an investigator of the mind's mysteries, he is in a class by himself."
--Publishers Weekly

For Oliver Sacks, islands conjure up equally the romance of Melville and Stevenson, the adventure of Magellan and Cook, and the scientific wonder of Darwin and Wallace.

Drawn to the tiny Pacific atoll of Pingelap by intriguing reports of an isolated community of islanders born totally color-blind, Sacks finds himself setting up a clinic in a one-room island dispensary, where he listens to these achromatopic islanders describe their colorless world in rich terms of pattern and tone, luminance and shadow. And on Guam, where he goes to investigate the puzzling neurodegenerative paralysis endemic there for a century, he becomes, for a brief time, an island neurologist, making house calls with his colleague John Steele, amid crowing cockerels, cycad jungles, and the remains of a colonial culture.

Out of this unexpected journey, Sacks has woven an unforgettable narrative which immerses us in the romance of island life, and shares his own compelling vision of the mysteries of being human.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375700730
• ISBN13: 9780375700736
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Science, Medicine, and Art, skillfully blended

The Island of the Colorblind provides what Sacks readers expect: serious neurological cases, a humane appreciation for the patient, and an artistic sensitivity. We learn about several societies where the gene for colorblindness has become established and how that has affected the cultures of the people. The Cycads presents a scientific mystery story that demonstrates again Sacks' observational care. I recommend this book for anyone with scientific or medical interests.

It is a Worthy Read

Another brilliant book By Dr. Oliver Sacks, this time about a community of color-blinds on a tiny island in the Pacific called Pingelap. He revels in this book that he has a fascination for Islands and when opportunity comes he packs off for this tiny island with two of his friends. One of his friends is from Norway (a psychologist) and himself achromatopic (completely color blind). To reach the island they have to do a lot of island hopping and this account itself is worth reflection. There are army bases and nuclear test sites on the tiny island they stop by and the author has reflected well on these issues, their implications and their experiences with army when they get stranded once. There is a strange quality about Dr. Sacks writing. He can make you wonder and almost enter the lives of the people he talks about. He has done so in his book `The man who mistook his wife for a hat...' and he has done it again in this book. We can probably never even imagine what it is to be color- blind, won't even reflect on something like this, after all we are so caught up in our normal lives. Consider a simple problem of recognising a ripe fruit with out being able to know the colour! But people do adapt and probably as Dr Sacks says they get over compensated in some other way. The author and his friends get to meet many such people and try to provide the medical opinion but much more than that they get involved with the people, their daily life, their hopes and frustrations. And by the gift of his writing he can take you there too. Just pick up the book. It is not only about color-blinds in a medical sense but about their lives as a whole. And while reading don't ignore the notes to all the pages given at the end of the book. They are many a times much more interesting than the main text. I agree it makes reading a bit cumbersome but it is well worth it.

A mini-vacation for the scientifically curious

I had not read Sacks before and was laid up in the Peninsula hospital in Burlingame. This book was lingering on the shelf at home and I had my wife bring it to me. Soon the beige walls and IV tubes dissapeared and I was fighting the humidity of the tropical south pacific. This book reads like a travelogue, a report on achromatopsia (congenital colorblindness), the lytico-bodig (an alzheimers/parkinsons like condition), and the fern-like batonical oddity of cycad trees, among other things. The description of the ruins of Nan Madol was awesome. Where one reviewer found this literary style to be 'rambling,' I found it to be deliciously lazy and ambling. Sacks employs the device of digression with a pace that sort of stones you. Maybe this motif was influenced by the kava Sacks took on Pohnpei.In any event, the book opens by delving into the congenital malady of acute colorblindness known as achromatopsia. Sacks learns of a little micronesian island with a large population of sufferers and follows his nose there with a couple of buddies, one of who is himself achromatopic. Soon we are on a small plane island hoping our way to the tiny atoll called Pingelap. You can virtually feel the tropical breeze reaching up your shorts. The description of achromatopsia is excellent. One almost imagines oneself as colorblind, seeing the world in a new perspective. Indeed, the light sensitive achromatopics here are often employed as night fishermen due to the advantage of their sensitive night vision, to catch flying fish in the phosphorescent waters of the warm Pacific. Sacks' attitude toward pathology is most admirable. He truly sees the afflicted as no more or less than whole people with differences, not partial or disfunctional people that are not normal. All of the afflicted in this book are examined respectfully and equitably as functional, whole, living organisms instead of sick and inferior. Geniune pathos appears where warranted but never condescendingly.Next we're off to the volcanic island of Pohnpei and the megalithic ruins that remind us these islands "were once the seat of monumental civilizations." More achromatopics are encountered here, along with the acculturational clash between these Pacific island cultures, a collection of population bottlenecks colonized by Southeastern Asians, and Europeans. We visit the rainforest and encounter delicate, endemic, flourescent ferns, and forests of sakau, the local psychopharmacological substance of choice.Then it's off to Guam to study the neurological disorder called the lytico-bodig of mysterious etiology. The island practice of consuming the toxic seeds of local cycad trees is supected as a cause of this condition, but it is unclear if it's caused by the eating of paste made from cycad tree seeds or is genetic in origin, as it seems to run in families. Sacks reaches into his experience with encephalitis induced coma patients and L-DOPA treatment in exploring the lytico-bodig. We also meet up with the ecolo

Something plesant

I read the first book that this volume contains on a short trip to Brussels. The images in the book captivated me more than the images around on the little holiday. I was sitting there in the Grand Square in Belgium, designed to be the most beautiful square in Europe, wanting to be in every moment where Sacks was. Everything in this book is put to the page with such elegance and beauty that I kept ranting about it to my girlfriend (to her annoyance). With some slight similarities to Douglas Adams' "Last Chance To See", this is one of the most wonderful books I've read in ages.

Neurological Adventures in Micronesia

Oliver Sacks describes, in beautiful depth, his childhood love of islands and his fascination with, in particular, the ancient cycad trees. He embarks on a expedition to the islands of the Pacific in order to research two extraordinary phenomena - a population which is largely achromatopic (colour-blind) and an island on which the causes of a mysterious paralysis have eluded scientists for decades. At the same time, he reveals his innate biophilia - an appreciation of life and the living world - which he believes is present to some degree in all men. He expresses this sentiment in many ways - in his sympathy towards his patients and his efforts to understand both their afflictions and their culture, and in his vivid description of the tropical plant and marine life which he beholds around him. The book contains a large section of well-researched footnotes, which indicate Oliver Sacks' extensive knowledge on the history and anthropology of these isolated populations. For all those with, as the author might say, even a slight degree of biophilia, this book should provide an interesting and informative account of the curious evolution of life on these islands of the Pacific.