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"Reflected in the glass, I saw the head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a vat of formaldehyde. His mouth was twisted, his nose damaged, his hair tousled, his gaze full of fear. One eye was sewn shut, the other goggled like the doomed eye of Cain." Jean-Dominique Bauby had never before described himself as such a wreck of a man. There was a time when Bauby seemed especially gifted with good fortune. Editor of Elle, a prominent French fashion magazine, he celebrated himself as a renowned journalist, urbane bon vivant, ardent friend, passionate lover, and dedicated father.

Tragically, Bauby's good fortune ended on December 8, 1995, when, at age 45, he suffered a massive stroke. Twenty days later, he awoke from a coma to find himself totally and permanently paralyzed. A victim of "locked-in" syndrome—absolutely immobile and completely speechless—he could communicate only by blinking his left eye. Trapped in the prison of own body, Jean-Dominique Bauby was now inert, an apparently helpless quadriplegic.

Nevertheless, Bauby remained alive, his vision limited, but his hearing unimpaired, and his mind lucid. That he still lived was no consolation. With mocking wit Bauby describes himself "reduced to the existence of a jellyfish." He mourned the loss of his glorified past, a life now forever spoiled. But self pity gradually turned to self discovery. Bauby came to understand that he might have been damned, but he was also blessed with a nearly eidetic memory and a limitless imagination. Instead of mocking him, Bauby's memories came to offer consolation and solace. Through his graphic imagination and vivid recall, he once more experienced many of the most gratifying moments of his former life -the piquant meals he had savored, the sensual women he had loved, the places and people he had cherished.

With all the audacity of the doomed, Bauby set about composing a memoir of both his real and his fantasy life in the hospital. After all, he couldn't speak, but he could at least blink one eye, and this he did, over 200,000 times. Bauby blinked in response to an amanuensis who recited the first letter in an alphabet beginning with the letters that occur most often in the French language (E, L, A, O, I, S, D …). A response of one blink signaled that, yes, she had come upon the first letter he needed to spell out the word he had in mind. Two blinks meant that, no, she had chosen a letter that wasn't the second letter of that word, and that she needed to try another letter. With admirable patience, his scribe continually repeated this tedious process, gradually helping him to spell one word and then another to finally form a sentence.

Through painstaking determination, Bauby ultimately spelled out enough sentences to complete The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a best seller published just two days before his death in March, 1996. In 2007, the book was transformed into a highly acclaimed film directed by the American artist and filmmaker, Julian Schnabel. The "diving bell" of the title symbolizes Bauby's sense of himself as oppressively confined, alone, and underwater. The "butterfly" represents his ability to soar, liberated from despair by euphoric fantasies.

Bauby was confined for life, the hospital his jail house, but his was hardly a solitary confinement. Loyal friends visited, doing their best to sound out his blinking responses. Bauby's dedicated physical therapist, Brigitte, comforted him with facial massages, laboriously teaching him to move his head, if only slightly. Sandrine, his speech therapist, whom he named his "Guardian Angel," struggled to have him ultimately pronounce the whole alphabet, an exhausting triumph for each of them. After his ninety-two-year-old father telephoned his speechless son, Bauby poignantly remembered their previous meeting when he had given his father a shave, for he was once the caregiver. With his young children, Celeste and Theophile, Bauby could take pleasure in being wheeled down to the ocean shore where he imbibed the restorative salt air, admired the dancing sail boats, and viewed his offspring cavorting on the beach.

Despite his losses, Bauby treasured life to the end, demonstrating how pure resolve and a potent imagination can triumph over even the most seemingly hopeless of circumstances. That Bauby completed an entire book is itself admirable. But his achievement is even more remarkable in that the reader is made to hear the distinct voice of a mute man. In a tone alternately sarcastic and serious, plaintive and joyful, Bauby speaks to us. The memoir is a tour de force, a moving work of art, and an affirmation of the human spirit.