I, Mona Lisa

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Listen to my history. My adventures are worth hearing. I have lived many lifetimes and been loved by emperors, kings and thieves. I have survived kidnap and assault. Revolution and two world wars. But this is also a love story. And the story of what we will do for those we love.

For five hundred years we've been looking at the Mona Lisa and it turns out that she's been looking right back at us. Over the centuries, few could hear her voice, but now we are let into the secret, as she tells us her story in her own words - a tale of rivalry, murder and heartbreak. And a mystery of Leonardo's greatest lost painting. Weaving through the years she takes us from the dazzling world of da Vinci's Florentine studio to the French courts at Fontainebleau and Versailles, and into the Twentieth Century.

But, always Mona Lisa returns to Leonardo himself. Most of all, this is a love story between painting and painter. Sometimes it takes an immortal to show us what it is to be human.

'A treat of a book' The Guardian on Mr Rosenblum's List

'Brims with passion and skillfully evokes a bygone era... a beautifully written tale' The Times on Mr Rosenblum's List

© Natasha Solomons 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

  • [A] lively, tender tale . . . In her zingy new novel [Solomons] gives the Mona Lisa . . . power, casting her as the fanciful narrator of her own story

    The Times
  • Solomons’ prose is lyrical and her detail immense. No longer can I look at the Mona Lisa without hearing her. But more, now I know her

    Press Association
  • A wonderfully written story of art, but also of obsession, friendship and love – I absolutely adored this novel

    Jillian Cantor, author of The Lost Letter and In Another Time
  • Oh, my god, I love this book! Extraordinarily inventive, a beautifully written, literary tour-de-force – a delicious historical and artistic feast

    John Ironmonger, author of Not Forgetting the Whale
  • A vividly beautiful tribute

    Woman's Own Magazine

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