Thomas Schlesser is the author of “Mona’s Eyes,” which was a No. 1 bestseller in France and has been translated into 37 languages, including Braille. The director of the Hartung-Bergman Foundation in France, he teaches art history at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. Schlesser will appear at Vroman’s in Pasadena on Oct. 27 to speak and sign the book.
Q. Please tell our readers about your new book.
“Mona’s Eyes” tells the story of a ten-year-old girl who spends 52 weeks visiting the great museums of Paris — the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, and the Centre Pompidou — guided by her grandfather. Each week, she discovers a single masterpiece and, through it, a way of understanding life: generosity, doubt, courage, melancholy, revolt, and many others. The book is built around this idea that art can teach us to live, not merely to know. It is at once a novel of transmission, a meditation on beauty, and a reflection on what it means to see.
One of the central aspects of “Mona’s Eyes” is its inclusive dimension. The book was conceived so that people with low or no vision could experience it fully. Its descriptions of artworks are written to be “heard” and imagined, and the novel exists in Braille and audio versions. It was important to me that the story be accessible to everyone — because vision, in the deepest sense, is not just a matter of the eyes, but of the soul.
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Q. Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?
Maybe “The Lion” by Joseph Kessel. I read it when I was the same age as Mona in my novel — ten years old. I think I had enjoyed it without fully understanding why: the friendship between the girl and the lion, the landscapes of Kenya, that mixture of beauty and danger. But what has stayed with me ever since is the final line: “And the beasts were dancing.” It struck me as a very concrete, almost physical metaphor — something you can see, feel, and believe in. And for some reason, it has followed me all my life.
Q. Is there a type of book you’re hesitant to read?
Philosophy. I’ve never had the mind for it — I think it requires a very particular kind of intelligence. But I must admit I’m also dismayed by the amount of jargon that so often surrounds it, a kind of delirious fog that stands between the reader and the idea. If I’m going to read something obscure, I’d rather it be the beautiful obscurity of poetry — at least madness there has music.
Q. Do you have any favorite book covers?
Absolutely — I’ve always been drawn to science-fiction covers, especially those that feel almost hyperreal, uncanny. I remember being deeply impressed by covers using works by Zdzisław Beksiński, whose art is dark, haunting, surreal — as though you’re peering into another realm through flesh and shadow. Of course, I wouldn’t call them untouchable masterpieces, but they possess an extraordinary imaginative force — a power to create entire worlds from a single image.
Q. Are you the kind of reader who finishes every book you start, or do you allow yourself to stop when a book doesn’t speak to you?
I don’t think it’s a problem to dip in and out of books. I like the idea that reading is a form of poaching — unpredictable, fragmentary, instinctive. I’ve always loved the freedom to move between pages, to catch sparks rather than follow maps. That said, I also recognize that some books demand to be felt and understood in their entirety — they form a world, a system. And I’ll admit something: it slightly irritates me when people tell me they’ve read “Mona’s Eyes” out of order, even if I pretend publicly that I don’t mind.
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Q. Do you have a favorite bookstore or bookstore experience?
Yes — I remember visiting a small bookstore in Los Angeles in 2007, called Wacko. It was unlike anything I’d seen before: half art gallery, half cabinet of curiosities. On one of the tables, I found an English translation of a book by my friend Philippe Di Folco about tattoos. Seeing his work there, so far from home, made me dream. So today, finding “Mona’s Eyes” in American bookstores feels both moving and a little unreal.
Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?
I’m not sure no one knows it, but the final part of “Mona’s Eyes” is built around artworks increasingly marked by darkness — as if the book itself were gradually embracing the risk of blindness that grows within the story. There are many small hidden details like that throughout the novel, subtle echoes between the paintings and Mona’s inner journey, that most readers don’t necessarily notice at first.
Q. If you could ask your readers something, what would it be?
I’m a polite person, so my question is always the same: How are you? It sounds simple, but it’s not. There’s a story I love about Milan Kundera — when someone asked him that automatic question, he paused and said: “That’s an important question. I’ll think about it. When I find the answer, I’ll tell you.”