Sylvain Tesson

Sylvain Tesson is a French writer, traveler, and adventurer born in 1972 in Paris. The son of journalist Philippe Tesson, he began traveling extensively as a young man, crossing Asia by bicycle and spending months alone in a cabin on Lake Baikal. His travel writing combines lyrical description with philosophical reflection and a Romantic attachment to wilderness and solitude. Tesson is the author of numerous travel books and essays, including Dans les forêts de Sibérie (Consolations of the Forest, 2011), a journal of six months in a Siberian cabin. He won the Prix Médicis essai for this work in 2011. In 2014, he survived a near-fatal fall from a rooftop that left him severely injured. La Panthère des neiges (The Snow Leopard), his 2019 Prix Renaudot winner, recounts a journey through the Tibetan plateau in search of the elusive snow leopard. The book is part travel narrative, part meditation on beauty, observation, and the art of paying attention, and was adapted into a celebrated documentary film. Tesson is one of the most popular French writers of his generation, with a devoted readership that responds to his blend of physical adventure and contemplative depth.