Twilight

Losing Sight, Gaining Insight

By: Henry Grunwald, Mark G. Ackermann - foreword

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

In 1992, when Henry Grunwald missed a glass into which he was pouring water, he assumed that he needed new eyeglasses, not that the incident was a harbinger of darker times. But, in fact, Grunwald was entering the early stages of macular degeneration - a gradual loss of sight that affects almost 15 million Americans yet remains poorly understood and is, so far, incurable. Now, in Twilight, Grunwald chronicles his experience of disability: the clouding of his sight, and the daily struggle to overcome its physical and psychological implications; the discovery of what medicine can and cannot do to restore sight; his compulsion to understand how the eye works, its evolution, and its symbolic meaning in culture and art.

Grunwald gives us an autobiography of the eye - his visual awakening as a child and young man, and again as an older man who, facing the loss of sight, feels a growing wonder at the most ordinary acts of seeing. This is a story not merely about seeing but about living; not merely about losing sight but about gaining insight. It is a remarkable meditation.

©2012 Henry Grunwald (P)2012 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

" Twilight is an elegant meditation on the very nature of eyesight, and the private struggle with its dissipation - the condition known inelegantly as macular degeneration, but in Henry Grunwald's astute and affecting prose, nothing less than a journey toward a kind of enlightenment." (Ward Just)

"Henry Grunwald has more than enough vision left to give us insight into the mysteries of the human eye - and the human condition. Twilight is a clear-sighted reminder to see all there is to see." (Katharine Graham)

"This sensitive and so beautifully written book is indeed an eye-opener to the glories of the world around us." (Barbara Walters)