Thomas Schlesser, "Mona's Eyes" (Europa Editions, 2025)

Sep 9, 2025

In this engaging discussion, Thomas Schlesser, art historian and director of the Hartung-Bergman Foundation, shares insights about his enchanting debut novel, featuring a young girl named Mona who learns about art during a period of temporary blindness. He explores the profound bond between Mona and her grandfather, their secret museum visits, and the emotional depths of artistic education. Schlesser also reflects on family dynamics, including struggles and connections, while discussing the multi-sensory impact of art and its relationship to life’s challenges.

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INSIGHT

Novel As Emotional Art History

Thomas Schlesser chose the novel form to convey emotions and create a lived universe around art rather than writing another academic essay.
He wanted fiction to humanize art history and make cultural history feel intimate and emotional.

ANECDOTE

A Decade Of Work

Schlesser spent about ten years developing Mona's Eyes while he published three nonfiction books in parallel.
The project was long and difficult, reflecting his deep investment in the story.

INSIGHT

Curation Driven By Character

He narrowed a huge initial list to 52 works and limited the novel to three Paris museums to keep the narrative focused.
The selection reflects Henri's character: classical foundation with an open mind.

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Mona’s Eyes (Europa Editions, 2025) is an enchanting debut novel written by art historian Thomas Schlesser. It tells the story of a 10-year-old girl living in Paris who briefly loses her vision. After much testing, the doctor suggests that Mona might benefit from seeing a psychiatrist, and Mona’s grandfather offers to take her to her appointment each week. Instead, every Wednesday afternoon for an entire year, he takes her to visit masterpieces of art from the past five hundred years, now displayed in the great museums of Paris. Henri, Mona’s grandfather, carefully explains each piece, shares the history of its creator, and emphasizes a lesson to be learned from it. He hopes that if her blindness returns, she will have internalized the colors, emotions, and beauty of 52 of the world’s finest and most influential pieces of art.

Thomas Schlesser is the director of the Hartung-Bergman Foundation in Antibes, France. He teaches Art History at the École Polytechnique in Paris and is the author of several works of nonfiction about art, artists, and the relationship between art and politics in the 20th century. Thomas received a PhD in History and Civilizations from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and obtained the Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR), a specific academic qualification in France, authorizing him to supervise doctoral research (as professor at École Polytechnique in Paris). He is the grandson of André Schlesser, known as Dadé, a singer and cabaret performer who founded the Cabaret L’Écluse. Mona’s Eyes is Thomas’s second novel and his American debut. It has been translated into thirty-eight languages, including Braille. Thomas was awarded 2025’s Author of the Year by Livres Hebdo. In his spare time, Thomas loves cooking and organizing aperitifs, dinners, and festive gatherings. He’s also passionate about retro gaming and pop culture, and he enjoys wandering and exploring at a leisurely pace. He constantly reflects on his many flaws and tries to work on them, although it's not easy. He listens to others, and if he has one message to share, it's that life is about patching things together — rigid, overly normative, and definitive frameworks should be approached with caution. He’ll add that the cause of animal welfare and the rights of people with disabilities are very dear to him.

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