When he finally woke up from his coma some six weeks later in the naval hospital at Berck-sur-Mer on the northern French coast, he found himself completely paralysed, unable to do anything except blink his left eyelid. After an unusually frenzied day at work, while rushing from his magazine offices in central Paris to collect his son Theophile from his ex-wife in the suburbs for a night out at the theatre, Bauby-a charming and gregarious bon viveur-suffered a massive stroke. The book's runaway success depended in part on the extraordinary circumstances of its composition.įifteen months earlier, on 8 December 1995 (the day Bauby describes as 'the end of the road') the unthinkable had happened.
On the day of its publication Le scaphandre et le papillon sold 25,000 copies and by the end of its first week the total had reached 150,000.
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