In Translation: Thomas Schlesser on Mona’s Eyes with Idra Novey

Wednesday, 7:00 pm EDT - 8:15 pm EDT September 24, 2025

The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed

mona's eyes

Join us for an evening with French art historian and debut novelist Thomas Schlesser, celebrating the release of his internationally bestselling novel Mona’s Eyes. Already a literary sensation across Europe, Mona’s Eyes follows ten-year-old Mona and her beloved grandfather on a poignant yearlong journey through 52 masterpieces of Western art as they prepare for Mona’s potential loss of sight. Exploring works by artists from Botticelli to Basquiat, the novel is both a tender meditation on intergenerational love and a luminous introduction to the transformative power of art.

Schlesser will be joined in conversation by Idra Novey, acclaimed author of Take What You Need and co-translator of Lean Against This Late Hour by Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian, a 2021 finalist for the PEN America Poetry in Translation Prize. Don’t miss this exploration of the raw emotions that art evokes, and the delicate balance of fragility and wonder found in fiction. A book signing will follow.

mona's eyes

In Conversation

  • NEW THOMAS_SCHLESSER__Pascal_Ito

    Thomas Schlesser

    Thomas Schlesser

    Thomas Schlesser is the director of the Hartung-Bergman Foundation in the Antibes, France. He teaches Art History at the École Polytechnique in Paris and is the author of several books about art and its relationship to politics in the 20th century. He is the grandson of André Schlesser, known as Dadé, a well-known singer who founded of the Cabaret L’Écluse. Mona’s Eyes is Schlesser’s American debut. It has been translated into thirty-seven languages, including Braille.


    Photo Credit: Pascal Ito

  • Idra_Novey_Final_Jesse_Dittmar-Claire-Fennell-1067x1600

    Idra Novey

    Idra Novey

    Idra Novey is a novelist, poet, and translator. Her most recent novel Take What You Need was a New York Times Notable Book of 2023, a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Prize. Her co-translation with Ahmad Nadalizadeh of Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian, Lean Against This Late Hour, was a finalist for the PEN America Poetry in Translation Prize in 2021. Her new book of poems Soon and Wholly was longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Voelcker Prize. Her work has been translated into a dozen languages and she’s written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the Guardian.


    Photo Credit: Jesse Ditmar

Featured Book

  1. . 
    mona's eyes

    Mona's Eyes

    By Thomas Schlesser

    Published by Europa Editions

    Translated by Hildegarde Serle

    PURCHASE

    While the doctors can find no explanation for Mona’s brief episode of blindness, they agree that the threat of permanent vision loss cannot be ruled out. The girl’s grandfather, Henry, may not be able to stop his granddaughter from losing her sight, but he can fill the encroaching darkness with beauty.

    Every Wednesday for a year, the pair abscond together and visit a single masterpiece in one of Paris’s renowned museums. From Botticelli to Basquiat, Mona learns how each artist’s work shaped the world around them. In turn, the young girl’s world is changed forever by the power of their art. Under the kind and careful tutelage of her grandfather, Mona learns the true meaning of generosity, melancholy, love, loss, and revolution. Her perspective will never be the same — nor will the reader’s.

    Mona’s Eyes is a heartfelt, enlightening journey across five centuries of Western art history. With the emotional impact of The Elegance of the Hedgehog and the readability of The Little Paris Bookshop, Thomas Schlesser’s sensational debut novel is at once a moving book about the beauty of life and a deeply touching story about the special bond between a girl and her grandfather.

    Discover all 52 masterpieces inside the fold-out dustjacket.

Events
More Events
Events

Discover More Upcoming Events