The best books that explain the mystery of consciousness

Nicholas Humphrey is our Darwin of the human mind. I first came across him in the mid-1980s when his television series The Inner Eye was broadcast. It was a revelation to me that such an elegant, comprehensive, and beautiful theory as his existed, explaining the evolution and nature of human consciousness. I bought the accompanying book at once, and it remains for me the best explanation of consciousness—a constant source of inspiration, including for my novels. Humphrey’s social intelligence theory remains, after forty years, the most widely accepted explanation of the evolution of consciousness.

Although not Fromm’s best-known book, The Sane Society is crucial because it states for the first time a description of the human condition. I was astonished when I first read it, as it presented to me the possibility that the human condition could be described, and, therefore by implication, understood, something which had never before occurred to me. Fromm’s thesis is that society in the 20th century, when he was writing, can be characterised as insane, because it does not meet humanity’s real needs. Part of the revelation of this book is that such needs can be developed from an analysis of the human condition. Since reading the book, I have followed Fromm’s conviction that a real and true description of ourselves is crucial to humane ethical progress. 

Dorothy Rowe’s books I discovered by accident in a Winchester second-hand bookshop, placed in the psychology section. A woman of considerable wisdom gained through her psychotherapy practice and her experience of the vicissitudes of life, Beyond Fear deals with something we all have to encounter, yet which so few of us properly understand and therefore disempower. Rowe explains in this life-changing book how fear manifests through various conditions, such as depression, a subject on which she is an acknowledged expert. I love it that she refused to simplify life, confronting it in all its difficult complexities. Life isn’t easy—we all discover that.

I remember reading this slim volume for the first time and being amazed by its clarity. For elegance and power of explanation, it is impossible to beat. For me, it was the bridge between my understanding of the individual human mind and minds in societies and in culture—especially ancient and prehistoric societies. I have always been fascinated by the evolution of the mind, and books that dare to deal with that topic are rare indeed. This one stunned me with its sophisticated descriptions of the types of myth we use throughout our lives, a sophistication matched with clarity of vision rarely put down on paper. It has always been a profound inspiration to the themes of my novels.

There are many books on prehistoric cave paintings, but this one is an acknowledged masterpiece. For decades, the power, beauty, and intense enigma of the European cave paintings in particular have fascinated me, not least because they allow us a window into the most critical of periods of our evolution when we were anatomically and psychologically modern, yet when our cultural and social forms were newborn. I strongly believe that to complete a description of the human condition we have to get to grips with cave paintings and other forms of prehistoric art. This book presents a powerful and brilliantly argued theory of shamanism, the use of metaphor, and of burgeoning human creativity. A truly inspiring work.