This short novel, beautifully translated by Daniel Levin Becker (faculty for Banff Centre’s 2024 Form and Constraint Residency), relates the story of a young woman who spends the night locked inside the Louvre with the intention of stealing the Mona Lisa. Armed only with a notebook, her toiletries, a duvet, a single cube of nougat, something else, and her memories of her father’s love of art, the narrator sinks into her thoughts about the dance of parenthood – truth and tale, forgiveness and betrayal. Every page is a rumination on the importance of art to know ourselves.
(Fern Books, 2024)