The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars: A Neuropsychologist’s Odyssey

An audacious and beautiful account of grief and who we are. Memoir, neuroscience and myth interweave to create a book unlike any other

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.