The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars

A Neuropsychologist's Odyssey

By: Paul Broks

Narrated by: Simon Bubb

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars by Paul Broks, read by Simon Bubb.

A man's wife dies. What next? The next day is next, and the next, and so on. He smothers his sorrow and gets on with the days. He's a Stoic. Tranquillity is the goal, but his brain won't rest. As a neuropsychologist he has spent a career trying to fathom the human brain but now, he comes to realize, his brain is struggling to make sense of him - probing, doubting, reconstructing.

Combining neurological case stories and memoir, and with excursions into speculative fiction and mythology, this is an audaciously original, deeply personal meditation on grief, time and selfhood

©2018 Paul Broks (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

[A] beautifully written investigation of grief ... As an exploration of love and loss, as a portrait of a person and of the nature of personhood, this book is about as true as any I have read (James McConnachie)

A wonderful, strange and genre-defying book (Adam Zerman)

A rewarding mind to spend some time with (David Aaronovitch)

The Darker the Night, The Brighter the Stars is a work of extraordinary insight and imagination. Broks is a 21st century Dante of the human psyche, guiding us on a journey full of surprise, erudition, and wit (David George Haskell)

In this gorgeous kaleidoscope of a book, the neuroscientist Paul Broks takes us image by image, story by story, into an exploration of life with all its brilliant hues of grief and despair, joy and resilience, biology and society. There's science here, and curiosity, and humanity, all forming a remarkable portrait of who we are - and who we hope to be (Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist)

Broks weaves many threads - memoir, neuroscience, and metaphysics - into a rich fabric of reflection, speculation and deep feeling. This is a work that defies categorization, fusing non-fiction and imagination into a single instrument of piercing insight and emotional honesty (Charles Yu)

Truly remarkable prose . . . Throughout, Broks is like a naturalist taking you through the wilderness of the human mind, and he's a companionable guide. (Eben Schwartz)

A beautifully written addition to brain literature ... will mesmerise anyone curious about the mass of goo inside our heads (John O’Connell on 'Into the Silent Land')

Full of wonders and unsettling new perspectives (Review of 'Into the Silent Land')

Reads as light as a souffle, yet has the resonant depth to haunt you for the rest of your days (John McCrone review of 'Into the Silent Land')