With the release of a film of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - directed by Julian Schnabel and starring Mathieu Almaric - you might imagine, if you only knew the story, that this could not be an effective subject for cinematic treatment. Because nothing happens. After a stroke, the French magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby lies in a hospital bed unable to move, speak, eat or breathe without mechanical intervention.

But he can think, and the turnings of his mind are as kinetic as any action movie. His memoir is written with a code developed by his speech therapist which rearranges the letters of the alphabet according to the frequency of their appearance in French - E S A R I N T, etc - his friends read out the letters until they arrive at the right one, and Jean-Dominique blinks. Some people labour on to the last syllable. Others go too fast and end up with gobbledegook.

Though shut inside his diving bell, Bauby's mind spins a magical cocoon. He contemplates the stained glass image of the Empress Eugenie, and buries his sad face “in the folds of her white gauze dress...She did not send me away”. He looks over the town from the deserted balcony and re-shoots the close-ups for Touch of Evil. He sees himself, strapped upright to a physiotherapist's bench, as Mozart's statue of the Commendatore. He cultivates the art of “simmering memories...The bourguignon is tender, the boeuf en gelée translucent”. There is, he says, so much to do. “You can wander off in space or in time, set out for Tierra del Fuego or for King Midas's court”.

On the telephone his eight- year-old daughter recounts her adventures with her pony. His 92-year-old father explains his difficulty in staying on his feet. Jean-Dominique can only breathe down the receiver. But in this testimony he conquers every desert, turns all the world to gold.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
HarperPerennial, £6.99

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