His friend Luria, "the pioneer of a newer and deeper medicine," told him: "You are discovering a whole new field... publish your observations, please. This will do something to change the 'veterinary' approach to peripheral disorders, and open the way for a deeper, more humane medicine." This is precisely what the renowned author and physician, a clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, does.

"The book can be considered a kind of neurological novel or short story, but it is a story whose foundation lies in personal experience and neurological truth." In it, the physician-author recounts his personal experience with a peculiar pathological condition resulting from a leg injury—"an injury with strange effects, from an accident on a mountain in Norway." It was an "abyss of strange and even terrifying effects," which left the author with "a deeper sense of the horror and wonder that lie behind life, hidden, so to speak, behind the usual superficial appearance of health."

In this novel, the main ideas merge with "the special neuropsychological and existential phenomena associated with my injury and recovery, the issue of being a patient and my subsequent return to the outside world, the complexities of the doctor-patient relationship..." leading "in the end to a critique of current neuroscience, and to a vision of what the neuroscience of the future might be."

The author structures his narrative in stages, beginning with the leg injury during a mountain climb. "And I Became a Patient" is the second stage, detailing his illness and surgery. The third stage, "The World of Oblivion," is a journey "to despair and back, a journey of the soul..." followed by "Activation." He then discusses the "solution by walking," wondering, "How can I move a phantom mass of jelly... a mirage loosely attached to my hip?"

In the final stages, "Convalescence" and "Understanding," he explores the feelings of healing and the comprehension of the experience. A 1991 postscript concludes that neuroscience must now leap from a mechanical model to a personal, self-referential model of the brain and mind.

• Publishing House: Arab Scientific Publishers/Lebanon
• Number of Pages: 255
• Year of Publication: 2009