An astonishing personal journey from hearing to deafness and back again helps Bella Bathurst explore what sound, listening and silence mean to us

A book to remind us to treasure the gift of sound. -- Laura Freeman * Times * Fascinating ... Bathurst is a restless, curious writer, and she interweaves the story of her own experiences with imaginative research around hearing and sound ... After reading this book, I found myself listening in a richer and more interested way. -- Alice O'Keefe * Guardian * 'Extraordinary ... echoes long after you have turned the final page. * Mail on Sunday * 'Her writing draws on all the senses ... This is a moving and fascinating book, all about sound and what it means to be human. It has its share of sound and fury, and benefits from a journalist's ability to listen. Many people with hearing loss, and more without, would benefit from hearing its message. * Financial Times * Terrifying, absorbing and ultimately uplifting. It's a hymn to the faculty of hearing by someone who had it, lost it and then found it again, written with passion and intelligence and full of matters that I knew little about. It's a brave and important work -- Rupert Christiansen * Literary Review * An empathetic, sensitive look at how a physical loss can transform the way you understand the world and how you live in it * Sunday Express * Poignant ... I suspect [deafness] sharpened her writing. Bathurst's drive to communicate has been channelled into excellent non-fiction * Daily Telegraph * Bathurst is good on aural geography ... when her hearing is restored, it is returned to someone who is profoundly changed by the experience -- Marion Coutts * Guardian *

Bella Bathurst is a writer and photojournalist. Her books include The Lighthouse Stevensons which won the 1999 Somerset Maugham Award, The Wreckers, which became a BBC Timewatch documentary, and The Bicycle Book, which was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2011.