A Smell of Burning cover art

A Smell of Burning

The Story of Epilepsy

Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

A Smell of Burning

By: Colin Grant
Narrated by: Theo Soloman
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

One day Colin Grant’s teenage brother Christopher failed to emerge from the bathroom. His family broke down the door to find him unconscious on the floor. None of their lives were ever the same again. Christopher was diagnosed with epilepsy.

A Smell of Burning tells the remarkable story of this strange and misunderstood disorder. How certain people, at a particular moment in their life, start to suffer seizures, often preceded by an aura, of which a smell of burning is one of the most common.

For many years epilepsy was associated with mental illness or even possession by devils. People with epilepsy were forbidden to marry or have children. Many became victims of Nazi eugenics programmes. To this day many people with epilepsy - 60 million worldwide - still live in fear of exposure.

Grant’s book traces the history of the condition and the pioneering doctors whose extraordinary breakthroughs finally helped gain an understanding of how the brain works. He tells the stories of famous people with epilepsy like Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vincent Van Gogh, and through the tragic tale of his brother, he considers the effect of epilepsy on his own life.

©2016 Colin Grant (P)2019 Audible, Ltd
Mental Health Human Brain

Listeners also enjoyed...

Life Unseen cover art
The Deep Places cover art
Every Third Thought cover art
The Guru, the Bagman and the Sceptic cover art
On Agoraphobia cover art
All in My Head cover art
Classic Case Studies in Psychology cover art
LSD: The Wonder Child cover art
The Pleasure Shock cover art
Madness cover art
Leonardo Da Vinci cover art
Borrowing Life cover art
Proof of Life After Life cover art
Falling into the Fire cover art
This Book Will Change Your Mind About Mental Health cover art
Into the Abyss cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
Grim listening, epileptics should handle with care. a fascinating history. not fun but essential.

as it is.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

This type of book was a long time coming! Well written, well researched. A big big helpx

Thank You!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.