The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat

by Oliver Sacks (1985)

When I awoke from a three day coma in 1993, I had complete amnesia. I couldn't fix words to things, faces to identities (including my own), even the distinction between organic and inorganic became unclear (my parents looked computer-generated). When the amnesia cleared, I found my condition utterly fascinating, and thought of this book, which I'd read only weeks before. In this collection of medical case studies, Sacks examines people whose particular capacities are stripped away, physical, linguistic, psychological, questioning what is then left of our identities, of our humanity?