'Mona's Eyes': how an obscure French art historian swept the globe

French art historian Thomas Schlesser is still adapting to life as a best-selling global author having written one of the break-out hits of the last year in 'Mona's Eyes'.
For a man more used to university lecture halls or the dry world of academic publishing, becoming a literary phenomenon, particularly in the United States, was unexpected.
'I was very surprised that the book achieved such success in France and abroad,' Schlesser said in an interview in Paris to promote his next work.
'The United States is an incredibly tough market since Americans read English-language authors,' he added. 'It goes without saying that I'm very happy, and very proud, but at the same time astonished.'
The English translation of 'Mona's Eyes' peaked at number four in The New York Times best-selling hard-back fiction chart shortly before Christmas and has sold an estimated 250,000 copies there.
Book-selling behemoth Barnes and Noble named it its book of the year.
Worldwide, it has been translated into 37 languages and has sold a million copies, around half of them in home market France where Schlesser has become a literary celebrity.

Success formula
It tells the story of a grandfather who educates his granddaughter Mona about the beauty of art after she is told by doctors she risks going blind.
The pair visit the most famous museums in Paris — the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay and the Pompidou Centre — where Mona learns about everything from Renaissance work to abstractism.
Paris and its cultural heritage are a winning literary combination — from The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo to The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown — but Schlesser thinks he hit a chord for other reasons.
'There's a passion for the arts, but what I feel above all is universal sensitivity to the bonds around transmission between generations, between a grandfather and a granddaughter.
'And there's another very important thing, particularly among Americans I sensed, it's that 'Mona's Eyes' is a book that addresses the subject of disability,' he added.
Fundamentally Schlesser believes there is a 'resurgence of poetry among younger generations'.
Having helped popularise art and museum-going, he is hoping to have the same effect on the written word. — AFP