Nine Minds
Daniel Tammet

Book Reviews

• "This book is a meeting of minds, in all their vast capacity, passionate commitments, and varied flavours - a profound act of appreciation of the many unexpected gifts of neurodivergence."
  Emma Donoghue
• "Beautiful and intimate and mind-expanding. We generally presume that everyone's inner life is like our own;  only rarely do we get to dive deeply into the mind of another, much less nine of them. Tammet gives us this opportunity with his characteristic eloquence, insight and grace."
  David Eagleman, neurologist and author of Incognito and Livewired
• "Daniel Tammet's wonderful portraits of autistic people's inner lives illustrate the range of neurodivergent talents and experiences, and celebrate human cognitive diversity."
  Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre, Cambridge University, author of The Pattern Seekers
• "There are more than nine minds in this book, there are ten: Daniel Tammet's own mind is there on every page, in the narrative flow, the wordplay and the empathy for his subjects. Nine Minds reminds us of the diversity within neurodiversity, and of the common challenges that the neurodivergent face. A fine contribution to the growing body of work by and about people who think differently."
  Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project
• "Over two decades Daniel Tammet has narrated the neurodivergent experience and in his deeply researched Nine Minds he breaks new ground, turning a novelistic eye to autistic lives as compelling as any in fiction. The result is a book as beautiful as the minds it portrays."
  Amy Tan,author The Joy Luck Club
• " Beautifully rendered, painstakingly researched, and completely absorbing, Nine Minds offers something that autistic people urgently need: it humanises us."
  Katherine May, author of Wintering and Enchantment
• "Beautifully written and fascinating, Nine Minds takes us deep into the inner lives of nine extraordinary people. With eloquence and sensitivity, Daniel Tammet transcends stereotypes and shows us different facets of neurodivergence. I loved this book."
  Angie Kim, author of Happiness Falls
• "In Nine Minds, Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant and author of Born on a Blue Day, reports on the unique lives and cognitive differences of nine neurodivergent people. This fascinating book engages by imaginatively entering its subjects' inner worlds. Each profile is based on hours of interviews. Readers will discover a spectrum filled with valuable different kinds of minds."
  Temple Grandin, author of The Autistic Brain.
• "With the release of Born on a Blue Day, Daniel Tammet showed readers the extraordinary power of his autistic mind. Today, with Nine Minds, he explores the challenges, cognitive processes, and life goals of other neurodivergent thinkers. He reveals the exceptionality they bring to the world by finding their ways in life. There are costs for being "born different" but society's benefit from the existence of neurodivergent people is incalculable and incredibly diverse. These stories offer glimpses into parts of the human experience most people never see, yet we are all touched by neurodiversity every day, and we are better for it. "
  John Elder Robison, author of Be Different
• "As Daniel Tammet's short sentences morph and lengthen into a kind of literary portraiture, you may find unique insights into autism and new aspects of our shared humanity. "
  Jory Fleming, author of How To Be Human
• "Daniel Tammet’s own life is already evidence of the extraordinary depth of thinking that may be part of autism and of the value of minds that are different from mainstream ones, but if the principle needed any further support, it is provided in Nine Minds, a study of remarkable people on the spectrum and their dazzling accomplishments.  Written with insight, generosity, compassion and narrative energy, Tammet’s exquisite portraits remind us that the variety of brains is every bit as essential as any other form of diversity that sustains the planet."
  Andrew Solomon, professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University Medical Center and author of Far From The Tree
• "  Tammet's books about words and numbers are bursting with feeling and possibility ... in telling the fictionalised tales of nine real, well-known autistic people, he demolishes the autism myths that originated with medics around 90 years ago and [have since] migrated to the public imagination."
  Sunday Telegraph
• "Tammet is able to live in a "thought-world of numbers", and yet he is also a writer whose qualities contradict the oft-made assumption that autism and empathy cannot coexist within the same mind. Like a novelist, he enters his characters' heads ; he reconstructs dialogue and shifts time and place ... he celebrates the gifts and talents of autistic people, while exploring the richness of their desires and dreams."
  Guardian
• "  Tammet, who has written nine other books, including his memoir Born on a Blue Day, skilfully gives each portrait colour and personality so they zip along, with loves, joys and challenges effortlessly woven together in an engaging but sensitive style."
  New Scientist
• "Eye-opening. Tammet, a bestselling writer who has Asperger's, reflects that autism is not a problem to be solved but a natural cognitive difference found in between one and two per cent of the population ... while Tammet does mention characteristics of his subjects' neurodivergence, the focus is much more on telling the stories of extraordinary lives."
  Mail on Sunday
• "This is probably the best book of profiles of high-achieving autistics, with the chapter on Dan Aykroyd especially interesting."
  Tyler Cowen
• "The strength of Tammet’s Nine Minds: Inner lives on the spectrum lies not only in his personal perspective, but also in his simple strategy of asking people who live with autism, or people who know them, to tell him frankly what it’s like. Obvious, one might think, but it’s a method long overlooked even by professionals with a specialist interest ... The book features some well-known figures – the actor Dan Aykroyd, the poet Les Murray, the mathematician Cédric Villani and the novelist Naoise Dolan. Tammet’s aim is to evade “limiting clichés” by showing us “the singular power and beauty of the autistic imagination”, which can give us poets, actors and writers, not just computer programmers. They too can delight in nature, be excited by technology, business or culture; grieve and rage and feel the pain of social rejection. Nine Minds is presented as a celebration of autistic talent and depth, but Tammet also writes of “defying outdated prejudices”. It is a sad illustration of their potency that in 2024 this book should feel so fresh."
  Times Literary Supplement
• "Tammet sheds fresh light on autism in these vivid profiles. . . . The result is an intimate and illuminating glimpse into the neurodivergent mind."
  Publishers Weekly, starred review
• "An impressive composite biography that emphasizes the beauty of difference."
  Foreword
• "Tammet’s] writing is compassionate and understanding, allowing each subject to fully tell his or her story. Explanation is seamlessly blended with storytelling, creating an engaging and educating experience for readers."
  Library Journal
• "Lyrically drawn portraits ... bring sympathetic insight to his subjects' experience of being cognitively different ... nuanced and supportive in his narration, detailed and vivid in depicting the circumstances of each life ... a skilled writer, Mr Tammet adopts the perspective of his subjects, looking out at their worlds from inside, imagining their thoughts and embodying their joy, their fear, their moments of relief. "
  Wall Street Journal
• "  It is possible that because Tammet experiences the world so differently, he conveys difference so powerfully in others. Here, he has taken the lives of nine extraordinary autistic men and women and given us the kind of insight  into neurodivergence that I haven't read since Oliver Sacks's "An Anthropologist on Mars" ... I found each story in "Nine Minds" so moving that they became, in my mind, a series of Joseph Campbell-like Hero's Journeys, where each character traveled through adventures, trials and temptations and emerged from the narrative somehow changed. On finishing the book it took a day of neurotypical reflection to realize the ones transformed are us."
  Washington Post