The Writer Who Couldn’t Read … And What That Tells Us About the Brain

It happened suddenly one day. Howard Engel, a Canadian mystery writer, woke up and realized he couldn’t read the daily newspaper, let alone his own novels. He had suffered a stroke, it turns out, that left him with a rare condition called alexia sine agraphia, a condition that strangely leaves victims unable to read, but able to write. It seems paradoxical. Reading and writing go hand in hand, right? Not necessarily, and that’s why we’re glad that we have NPR’s artful video here to explain.