When Stephen Clingman was two, he underwent an operation to remove a birthmark under his right eye. The operation failed, and the birthmark returned, but in somewhat altered form. In this captivating book, Clingman takes the fact of that mark -- its appearance, disappearance, and return -- as a guiding motif of memory.

Not only was the operation unsuccessful, it affected his vision, and his eyes came to see differently from each other. Birthmark explores the questions raised by living with divided vision in a divided world -- the world of South Africa under apartheid, where every...