The Mind Electric by Pria Anand

*LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 PEN AMERICA LITERARY AWARDS*
*WINNER OF THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD*

A young woman channelling the voice of the Holy Spirit. A mother whose children have been replaced by changelings. A family cursed by a mysterious inability to sleep. Pria Anand's patients come to her with myriad peculiar symptoms, but they all have something in common: their diagnosis always hinges on a story. Her task as a neurologist is akin to a detective's, piecing together the clues in a patient's account with the tells of their body in order to settle on a diagnosis.

Moving from the Boston hospital where Pria Anand treats her patients, to her childhood years in India, to Isla Providencia in the Caribbean and to Guinea in West Africa, The Mind Electric demonstrates again and again the compelling paradox at the heart of neurology: that the strangest symptoms experienced by any single individual can show us something universal about being human.