Donovan's Brain

By Curt Siodmak

Categories: Literature & Fiction

Donovan's Brain is a 1942 science fiction novel by the German-American writer Curt Siodmak, best known as the screenwriter of The Wolf Man, which was adapted several times for film, radio and television. Dr. Patrick Cory, a scientist experimenting with keeping brains alive outside the body, secretly saves the brain of the ruthless millionaire W. H. Donovan after a plane crash and keeps it alive in a tank. As the brain grows in power, it begins to communicate telepathically and take control of Cory, pursuing Donovan's own sinister purposes.

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• Margaret Atwood: “Donovan’s Brain stands out: it was about an overgrown and demented brain which was being kept alive in a glass jar by scientists – a brain which was trying to take over the world. In addition to colouring my view of politicians, this prepared me for the reading of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, later on.”