The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly

First UK edition. 8vo. Pp. 139, [1]. Black cloth lettered in gilt to spine; dark blue end papers. Jacket design by Tracey Winwood with photography by Michael Wildsmith.

Security tag affixed to inner dustwrapper, else Fine.

Translated from the French Le scaphandre et le papillon by Jeremy Leggatt, originally published by Éditions Robert Laffont.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Memoir by the former editor-in-chief of French Elle magazine, a victim of locked-in syndrome who 'dictated' this testament to endurance by batting an eyelid. It took him ten months, or about 200,000 blinks to write with an average word taking approximately two minutes. Published in France on March 6, 1997, it was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. A couple of days after the book's publication, on March 9, 1997, Jean Dominique-Bauby died of pneumonia.

In 1997, Jean-Jacques Beineix directed a 27-minute TV documentary, "Assigné à résidence" (released on DVD in the U.S. as "Locked-in Syndrome"), that captured Bauby on the grounds of L'Hopital Maritime de Berck-Sur-Mer, in the process of the book's composition.

A decade later, painter-filmmaker Julian Schnabel turned the book into a film for the big screen, starring Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, and Max von Sydow. Gaining multiple nominations for the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, and the César Awards, it went on to win the Best Director Award at Cannes (while also being nominated for the Palm d'Or), the Best Actor gong at the Césars for Amalric, while playwright Ronald Harwood won a BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay. It additionally won Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes.

"A staggering piece of work. It represents an almost inconceivable act of generosity, the gift of the mind and spirit for which writing was designed." –A. L. Kennedy