The Art of Writing: A Guest Post by Thomas Schlesser
A vivid exploration of art through a young girl’s museum adventures with her beloved grandfather. This is a heartfelt tale that stirs the soul and feeds the imagination. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Thomas Schlesser on writing Mona’s Eyes.
Hardcover $30.00
Mona's Eyes (2025 B&N Book of the Year)
Mona's Eyes (2025 B&N Book of the Year)
By
Thomas Schlesser
Translator
Hildegarde Serle
In Stock Online
Hardcover $30.00
Ten-year-old Mona and her beloved grandfather have only fifty-two Wednesdays to visit fifty-two works of art and commit to memory “all that is beautiful in the world” before Mona loses her sight forever.
Ten-year-old Mona and her beloved grandfather have only fifty-two Wednesdays to visit fifty-two works of art and commit to memory “all that is beautiful in the world” before Mona loses her sight forever.
A reader holding Mona’s Eyes in their hands is immediately struck by two things: first, the book jacket, which shows the 52 “initiatory” works that accompany Mona in her journey of growth; and second, the passages set in italics. These italic passages—52 in all, one for each chapter—are what the Ancient Greeks called ekphrasis. What does that mean? Ekphrasis is the attempt to describe an object with such precision that it seeks to exist, almost hallucinatory, in the reader’s mind. Some readers love these passages; others dislike them and skip them! For me, they were pure madness to write, to the point of tearing my hair out.
I began writing this book in 2013, at a difficult time in my life. I had just come through a personal ordeal, and out of it I invented an ideal little girl, almost a child of substitution. I imagined Mona, ten years old, a marvel—charming, intelligent, modest, funny. It was a joy to think of her, to make her interact with the world and with a remarkable grandfather. But to make her truly touching, I placed a possible tragedy upon her: she might lose her sight.
From that moment, I knew the book had to engage with the reality of blindness and visual impairment. My ambition was both ethical and literary: fifty percent an act of inclusion, and fifty percent a literary challenge. And this challenge is not the only one—there are others, more or less hidden, that belong to what in France is called Oulipo: the art of writing under constraints, turning rules and restrictions into creativity.
What I never wanted was to write a book about disability, a commentary on blindness. I wanted to write a book that would itself be an active response, speaking directly to blind and visually impaired readers.
That is why the book contains 52 italic passages—ekphrasis—descriptions meant to “make artworks seen” through words. Writing them was torment and joy: from the overflowing detail of Courbet’s Burial at Ornans to the stark simplicity of Malevich’s Black Cross.
In the end, Mona’s Eyes can be read without images. That is what I am most proud of: the novel now exists in Braille, and when I shared it with blind readers, their feedback—often deeply moving—made me feel this long struggle in writing had not been completely in vain.
Author Bio:
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. 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 Schlesser’s second novel and his American debut. It has been translated into thirty-eight languages, including Braille. Schlesser was awarded 2025’s Author of the Year by Livres Hebdo.