André falls in love with Céline, his history teacher, a woman with rebellious ideas and a feminist avant la lettre. Twenty years his senior, she is the only person who can understand the blind André’s sensibility. At the same time, André makes friends with Pablo Picasso, because his father is the gardener at the French castle where the painter lives.
Intrigued by how a blind person might approach reality and art, Picasso slowly becomes his confidant. From the sound of the bicycle chain to the scent of desire, this story invites us to submerge ourselves in the world of the senses and experience this surprising love story from a singular perspective. Along with readers, Picasso, the great lover of life, will learn in his old age that the world can be looked at from another perspective.
The stirring story of passion between a teacher and a blind student, the son of Picasso’s gardener.
André is a special hero, intelligent, curious, innocently seductive, and both Picasso and his teacher Madame Lamy will be swept into his way of looking at art and the world.
André’s blindness becomes a literary device that allows the reader to approach the world from a more primary and sensuous perspective.