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 (Europa Editions, August 26, 2025) is Schlesser's second novel and his U.S. debut, centering on a girl and her grandfather who have 52 Wednesdays to commit great works of art to memory before the girl loses her sight. It has been translated into 38 languages, including Braille. Schlesser was awarded 2025's Author of the Year by Livres Hebdo.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
A young girl, threatened with blindness, explores great paintings with her grandfather--a journey where art becomes an existential lesson about beauty, loss, and wonder.
On your nightstand now:
Gou Tanabe's manga adaptations of Lovecraft: not ideal for falling asleep, but absolutely brilliant.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien--before the movies were released!
Your top five authors:
Marcel Proust: the perfect combination of linguistic richness and analytical subtlety.
Guillaume Apollinaire: the pinnacle of a singing melancholy.
Marguerite Duras: characters like scalpel strokes, and a unique atmosphere I feel I understand intimately.
Charles Baudelaire: his poetry is like a kind of intoxication.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline: sentences like electric shocks.
(That's a French list! I'll make an international one next time!)
Book you've faked reading:
Ulysses by James Joyce--but I don't think I'm the only one!
Book you're an evangelist for:
It seems to me that you're usually an evangelist when you're recommending the Bible!
Book you've bought for the cover:
Surprising question! I don't recall that ever happening to me; but when I publish books, I do hope the cover will have an impact--and I love the one for Mona's Eyes!
Book you hid from your parents:
No books! But maybe one or two magazines when I was 13.
Book that changed your life:
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. Faced with the many failures I experienced in my youth, especially between the ages of 20 and 30, Proust was a great source of comfort to me, thanks to the lucidity of his gaze upon the world and our human frailties. I believe Proust is a writer one can only truly appreciate once he is deeply felt; studying him academically is a lost cause--he must be experienced to be understood.
Favorite line from a book:
"I am a cage in search of a bird." --Franz Kafka's The Blue Octavo Notebooks. Both funny and terrifying. It's an explosive image...
Five books you'll never part with:
I don't have a particularly fetishistic relationship with books--I can part with them without any trouble. In fact, feel free to come help yourself at my place!
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick.