Tilda Swinton stars as Eva Khatchadourian, a former travel writer now relegated to clerical work, whose recollections, triggered by easy visual rhymes, dose out snippets of a past that she remembers fully and painfully.

NEWYORKER: We Need to Talk About Kevin

In January of 2002, Canadian novelist Howard Engel sent the writer a letter about his experience with alexia sine agraphia, a form of visual agnosia which results in an inability to recognize written language.

NEWYORKER: A Man of Letters