Product Description
The distinguished Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy was sitting in a Budapest café, wondering whether to write a long-planned monograph on modern man or a new play, when he was disturbed by the roaring—so loud as to drown out all other noises—of a passing train. Soon it was gone, only to be succeeded by another. And another. Strange, Karinthy thought, it had been years since Budapest had streetcars. Only then did he realize he was suffering from an auditory hallucination of extraordinary intensity.

What in fact Karinthy was suffering from was a brain tumor, not cancerous but hardly benign, though it was only much later—after spells of giddiness, fainting fits, friends remarking that his handwriting had altered, and books going blank before his eyes—that he consulted a doctor and embarked on a series of examinations that would lead to brain surgery. Karinthy’s description of his descent into illness and his observations of his symptoms, thoughts, and feelings, as well as of his friends’ and doctors’ varied responses to his predicament, are exact and engrossing and entirely free of self-pity. A Journey Round My Skull is not only an extraordinary piece of medical testimony, but a powerful work of literature—one that dances brilliantly on the edge of extinction.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 4 reviews)

An amazing description of the author's brain surgery without anaesthesia by Darryl R. Morris (Atlanta, GA)

4 Stars
February 25, 2009
Frigyes Karinthy (1887-1938) was an influential Hungarian novelist, playwright, poet and journalist. A Journey Round My Skull is a literary account of the development and successful removal of his brain tumor, which occurred near the end of his life. His symptoms begin insidiously, with auditory hallucinations, followed by headaches and vomiting of increasing severity, and loss of visual acuity. Despite these symptoms, which are suggestive of a brain tumor or another process that would cause increased intracranial pressure, the doctors in Budapest ignore his symptoms and fail to reach an accurate diagnosis. He eventually travels to Vienna, where clinicians there eventually reach the correct diagnosis. He undergoes surgery in Stockholm by a brilliant young neurosurgeon who prefers to operate on Europeans while they are awake, to minimize postoperative morbidity. Karinthy's description of the surgery is unforgettable, as he is conscious for all but the last portion of the procedure.

I was in awe of the clinicians who were able to accurately diagnose his tumor without the benefit of advanced radiographic tools such as CT or MRI scans, but I was also horrified by the time it took to reach an accurate diagnosis and to remove the tumor, and the ineptitude and brusqueness of most of the clinicians Karinthy encountered - including his own wife, who was a renowned psychiatrist. Also of interest is the varied reactions of his friends and colleagues to his illness, especially when the seriousness of his condition became apparent.

There are a number of digressions throughout the book, which were a bit distracting and seemed to contribute little, if anything, to this amazing story. Nonetheless, it was a very enjoyable read.

Fascinating and insightful by Lisa C. Hamilton (Marietta, GA)

5 Stars
August 11, 2008
I purchased this book because, upon browsing it in the bookstore, it mirrored much of my experience with seizures and brain surgery. His descriptions and the unreal experience of having a brain disease hit the bulls eye. The floating, stream of conciousness-like storytelling brings home the feelings involved with such a curious experience. I'm enjoying it immensely.

Dreamlike Narration of Illness by Gary Schroeder

3 Stars
July 02, 2008
A Journey Round My Skull appears (based on reviews and cover blurbs) to be a classic of the 'sick patient' genre. I'm not exactly sure why. I found it to be a little challenging to stick with to the end. Part of the problem is the stilted translation from Karinthy's native language. It never flows well and reads very much like a translation inasmuch as the english phrases seem awkward, rough and not-quite-right. I almost never forgot that I was in fact reading a translation -- surely a sign of a less than stellar job.

That aside, Karinthy's style never really caught on with me. What I expected to be a straight-up tale of what happens to a patient with a brain tumor saddled with diagnosis and treatment using only mid-20th century technology, turned out to be a more dreamlike, stream of consciousness experience that was often a little confusing. Also surprising was Karinthy's baffling attitude at being stricken with a brain tumor. Never did he admit to self-pity, sadness or fear for the future. Instead he tells his story from a detached, "what will be will be" perspective. It's rather hard for me to imagine facing blindness and possible death with such a cavalier attitude. I question if he really did either.

The view from the outside in by Robert C. Ross (New Jersey)

4 Stars
March 16, 2008
In the spring of 1936, Frigyes (Frederic) Karinthy, a popular Hungarian poet, heard locomotives rumbling, reverberating, dying away. He knew there had been no trains on the streets of Budapest for 40 years. After long, exhaustive examinations Budapest neurologists told him that an egg-sized cyst webbed with tiny blood vessels was sprouting on the right side of his brain, back of his cerebellum. Karinthy's wife took him to Stockholm and Dr. Herbert Olivecrona.

Oliver Sachks asks: "Were doctors in Budapest in 1936, worse than doctors in, say, New York or London seventy years later? ... [O]ne needs to remember ... how difficult and delicate an art it was, seventy years ago, to diagnose and locate a cerebral tumor." Ether could not be used -- it would congest brain blood vessels. Karinthy remained awake during the operation. This book is the first patient's account of a brain operation in medical history.

Much of the book is autobiographical, but in chapter "Avdeling 13" Karinthy describes the operation itself.

"I felt them wheel me under the lamp. I felt a succession of little pricks in a wide circle ... on my head. Then . . . one long horizontal incision at the back of my neck. This did not hurt me either. I felt soft gestures, as if my flesh were being opened and folded back.

"There was a sudden jerk as if [Dr. Olivecrona] had seized the opening with a pair of forceps. It was followed by a straining sensation, a feeling of pressure, a cracking sound, and a terrific wrench. . . . Something broke with a dull noise. . . . Each cracking sound reminded me of taking the lid off a jamjar, while the process as a whole was like splitting open a wooden packing case, plank by plank. . . .

"A veritable fury of destruction seized hold of me. Break it up! I wanted to shout. Smash away! Bust it to bits! Everything had gone red in front of my eyes. If I had had an axe or a lump of iron in my hand I should have hit out with it and smashed up myself and everyone else with the wild recklessness of a maniac.

"Once the trephining of the skull was over . . . my mood underwent a change. There was a sound of pumping and draining and I could hear the drip, drip of a liquid. Although my brain didn't hurt at all, it did hurt me when one of the instruments fell on to the glass with a sharp, metallic sound. A certain idea passing through my mind hurt me too. It had nothing to do with my present situation. . . ."

Three hours after the operation began, the poet lost consciousness. Three weeks later, Karinthy went back to his Budapest cafés, and heard no more nonexistent locomotives.

His report from the operating table is compelling, and the autobiographical sections are also interesting as. "I felt absolutely at peace. This was no longer my whole life; it was just one afternoon. It might be that I was very ill. Perhaps I was even going to die. Yet this had nothing to do with that afternoon, nor I with the man born to sorrow from the day he came into the world."

And again: "Throughout nature, every living body has two aspects--one connected with its private functions and individual life, and one which we may call the sexual. Each of our organs has likewise two aspects, adapted for completely different purposes. Thus, the eye is not merely an instrument of vision, but an alluring jewel, an ever-burning lamp, whose sparkle inflames the opposite sex."

Finally: "Reality as a genre requires no helping hand from the artist."

This book makes a great companion to My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor who writes about her journey inside her brain. Both are compelling reading.

Robert C. Ross 2008

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