1982: the play A Kind of Alaska by Harold Pinter, performed as part of a trilogy of Pinter's plays titled Other Places.The documentary won a Red Ribbon at the 1978 American Film Festival and first prize at the 1978 International Rehabilitation Film Festival. 1974: the documentary film Awakenings, produced by Duncan Dallas for Yorkshire Television as the first episode and pilot of the British television programme Discovery.The book inspired a play, two films, a ballet and an opera: In 1974 the book won the Hawthornden Prize. Prior to his death in 1973, Auden wrote, 'Have read the book and think it a masterpiece'. Auden, and bears an extract from Auden's 1969 poem The Art of Healing: The 1976 edition of the book is dedicated to the memory of Sacks's close friend the poet W. Such patients have undergone an enduring awakening, and enjoy possibilities of life which had been impossible, unthinkable, before the coming of L-DOPA. I have become much more optimistic than I was when I wrote Awakenings, for there has been a significant number of patients who, following the vicissitudes of their first years on L-DOPA, came to do – and still do – extremely well.

Sacks chronicles his efforts in the late 1960s to help these patients at the Beth Abraham Hospital (now Beth Abraham Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing) in the Bronx, New York. It recounts the life histories of those who had been victims of the 1920s encephalitis lethargica epidemic. Awakenings is a 1973 non-fiction book by Oliver Sacks.

1973 book by oliver sacks