The Mind Electric

'Lyrical and spellbinding' New Scientist

By: Pria Anand

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Hardcover | 5 June 2025 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
288 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
24.0 x 16.1 x 3.2

Hardcover

RRP $55.00

$52.75

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*LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 PEN AMERICA LITERARY AWARDS*

*WINNER OF THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD*
'Superb, compelling, delightfully labyrinthine' Telegraph

'The book fans of Oliver Sacks have been craving' The i

'Lyrical and spellbinding' New Scientist

'The best book I have read in years' Psychologist

A young woman channelling the voice of the Holy Spirit. A mother whose children have been replaced by changelings. A family cursed by a mysterious inability to sleep. Pria Anand's patients come to her with myriad peculiar symptoms, but they all have something in common: their diagnosis always hinges on a story. Her task as a neurologist is akin to a detective's, piecing together the clues in a patient's account with the tells of their body in order to settle on a diagnosis.

In her gorgeously lyrical, passionate and humane first book, Pria Anand shares stories of her own patients alongside her own experiences as a doctor, a mother and a patient, in order to explore all the bizarre ways in which our brains go awry. Moving from the Boston hospital where she treats her patients, to her childhood years in India, to Isla Providencia in the Caribbean and to Guinea in West Africa, she demonstrates again and again the compelling paradox at the heart of neurology: that the strangest symptoms experienced by any single individual can show us something universal about being human.

Industry Reviews

Reminiscent of Oliver Sacks and the best of medical writing. Fascinating

Full of wisdom, revelation and poetry. I loved every minute of this remarkable book and I will never think of my brain and body in the same way again.

A rich and humane work, compelling in its compassion for the personal stories behind the symptoms that bring people to clinics

Pria Anand just might be the heir to Oliver Sacks. Her gorgeous writing and incisive analysis reveal the marvellous neurological underpinnings of our existence

Pria Anand shares the strangeness and sheer wonder of our brains in a testament to the wildness inside us all - New Scientist, the Best Popular Science Books to Look Forward to in 2025

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