Harold L. Klawans

Harold L. Klawans (1937–1998) was an academic neurologist who launched a parallel career as a writer.

Klawans was born in Chicago. After graduating with an M.D. degree from the University of Illinois in 1962, Dr. Klawans became a neurologist and professor of neurology and pharmacology at Rush Medical College. He published in the fields of extrapyramidal disorders, neuropharmacology, and medical history and served as editor of The Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and of the encyclopedic Handbook of Clinical Neurology while publishing several novels.

His study Chekhov's Lie, written just three years before his own death in 1998, deals with the challenges of combining the writing with the medical life.

Selected works include:

Fiction

• Sins of Commission (1982) ISBN 0-7472-0090-4
• The Third Temple (1983)
• Informed Consent (1986)
• The Jerusalem Code (1988)
• And Mother Makes Thirteen (1999) ISBN 1-888799-20-X

Non-fiction

• Toscanini's Fumble and Other Tales of Clinical Neurology (1988) ISBN 0-553-34662-8
• Newton's Madness: Further Tales of Clinical Neurology (1990) ISBN 0-370-31420-4
• Trials of an Expert Witness: Tales of Clinical Neurology and the Law (1991) ISBN 1-888799-19-6
• Life, Death, and In Between : Tales of Clinical Neurology (1992) ISBN 1-56924-871-0
• Chekhov's Lie (1997) ISBN 1-888799-12-9
• Why Michael Couldn't Hit and Other Tales of the Neurology of Sports (1998) ISBN 0-7167-3001-4
• Defending the Cavewoman and Other Tales of Evolutionary Neurology (2000) ISBN 0-393-04831-4