One morning in 2001, Howard Engel, prolific mystery novelist, walked out his door to pick up his newspaper and found that he could no longer read. The headlines appeared to be in a different language, the articles in code. At the hospital Engel was told that he had had a stroke and now suffered from a condition called alexia—he could still write, he could no longer read. As soon as he committed a word to the page, it appeared to him to be in some kind of alien cipher. Street signs, soup-can labels, billboards, even his own street address were transformed into unintelligible symbols. He contacted famed neurologist Oliver Sacks, who has become transfixed by his unusual case.
Gradually, Engel has regained some of the ability to read, though slowly and with much effort. After much therapy and the support of his family, Engel has returned to writing the Benny Cooperman novels that have made him so widely adored among mystery fans.