This book recounts the extraordinary story of a group of twenty patients admitted to Mount Carmel Hospital in New York, survivors of the great epidemic of lethargic encephalitis that reached planetary dimensions in the 1920s, and the astonishing and sudden "awakening" Which they experienced forty years later thanks to Dr. Oliver Sacks, who administered them l-dopa, a drug of recent appearance at that time in the market. The anecdotes that tell of this series of patients are always moving, bear witness to the value with which they faced the disease and sometimes have tragic connotations. Despertares, already considered a classic of medical literature, appeared in 1973 and won the Hawthornden Award that year. Since then he has inspired a television documentary, radio scripts, plays and a remarkable film. The author has written a lot of new material for this revised edition, including a section about Awakening in the scene and the screen. "A book that makes you aware of the fragility of our lives" (Doris Lessing). "Oliver Sacks is passionate, generous and imaginative, as well as an indefatigable researcher and excellent writer" (The New York Times). "Once you start reading it, you can not leave it. A brilliant book full of humanity "(A. Alvarez, The Observer). "Awakening is not just a collection of extraordinary clinical cases, but also a book of memories, a moral essay and a novel. A Great Work "(The Washington Post). "A masterpiece" (W. H. Auden)