In December 1988 the author was stricken by a virus that targeted his brain, leaving him totally disabled and utterly changed. This book presents a picture of what it is like to find oneself possessed of a ravaged memory and unstable balance, and confronted by wholesale changes in both cognitive and emotional powers.
Floyd Skloot is the author of three novels, four collections of poetry, and a collection of essays, The Night Side. Individual essays from In the Shadow of Memory have been included in the anthologies The Best American Essays, The Art of the Essay 1999, and The Best American Science Writing 2000. The essay "A Measure of Acceptance" won the 2004 Pushcart Prize.
