‘Kate Cole-Adams has written a book that defies familiar categories. It is a personal memoir, a history, a scientific study, and a philosophical enquiry into the unconscious, and by drawing all these strands together the author has delivered a masterpiece.’
— Jamie Grant, head judge
Text is thrilled to announce authors Kate Cole-Adams and Ashleigh Wilson were award winners at the Waverley Council Nib Literary Awards on Wednesday night.
The Waverley Council Nib Literary Award was established in 2002 to recognise the role of research in fiction and nonfiction.
Anaesthesia: The Gift of Oblivion and the Mystery of Consciousness by Kate Cole-Adams is the winner of the Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award.
Anaesthesia
You know how it is when you go under. The jab, the countdown, the—
—and then you wake.
This book is about what happens in between.
Until a hundred and seventy years ago many people chose death over the ordeal of surgery. Now hundreds of thousands undergo operations every day. Anaesthesia has made it possible.
But how much do we really know about what happens to us on the operating table? Can we hear what’s going on around us? Is pain still pain if we are not awake to feel it, or don’t remember it afterwards? How does the unconscious mind deal with the body’s experience of being cut open and ransacked? And how can we help ourselves through it?
Haunting, lyrical, sometimes shattering, Anaesthesia leavens science with personal experience to bring an intensely human curiosity to the unknowable realm beyond consciousness.
Brett Whiteley
Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other Thing by Ashleigh Wilson is the winner of the People’s Choice Award.
Written with unprecedented behind-the-scenes access, and handsomely illustrated with classic Brett Whiteley artworks, rare notebook sketches and candid family photos, this acclaimed biography reveals for the first time the full portrait of Australia’s most celebrated artist.
Text congratulates both authors on their brilliant wins.
