Imagine that you’re a successful and charismatic magazine editor. You’re 43 years old and have a passion for life. Then you have a stroke. Then you slip into a coma for 20 days. When you wake up, you are mentally alert but you cannot move or speak.
And this condition — called “locked-in syndrome” — is permanent. Sadly, this is no fiction. It is the fate that befell French Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby. Bauby could control the movement of only one thing: his left eye. Determined to communicate, Bauby developed a code whereby his blinks came to signify letters, then words, then sentences. This is the memoir that slowly emerged.
Tags: Best of 2007, Biography 2007, Drama 2007