The author, former editor of French Elle magazine, describes the rare stroke to the brain stem that left his mind intact in a nearly totally paralyzed body.

The French editor of Elle magazine, Jean-Dominique Bauby, suffers a stroke that paralyzes his entire body, except his left eye. Using that eye to blink out his memoir, Bauby eloquently describes the aspects of his interior world, from the psychological torment of being trapped inside his body to his imagined stories from lands he only visits in his mind.