Sylvain Tesson

Sylvain Tesson (born 26 April 1972) is a French writer and traveller born in Paris. He has engaged in a number of unusual travels and expeditions which are the basis for his books. Among his most successful works are The Consolations of the Forest (2011), about a project to live alone in a Siberian cabin for six months and The Art of Patience (2019), about the quest for snow leopards in Tibet. For the latter book, he received the Prix Renaudot.

Early life

Sylvain Tesson is the son of Marie-Claude Tesson and the journalist Philippe Tesson who founded the French newspaper Le Quotidien de Paris. His sisters are the actress Stephanie Tesson and the art journalist Daphne Tesson. He is a geographer by background and holds a degree in geopolitics.

Travels and writing

In 1991, he crossed central Iceland on a motorcycle, and then took part in a cave exploration in Borneo. In 1993 and 1994, he toured the world by bicycle with Alexandre Poussin, whom he had known since secondary school. The two friends then completed their studies in geography. He wrote about the trip in 1996, in the book On a roulé sur la terre, for which he received the youth IGN prize.

Again with Poussin, in 1997 he crossed the Himalayas by foot, a five-month journey of 5000 kilometres from Bhutan to Tajikistan. He and Poussin then collaborated on the book La Marche dans le ciel: 5000 km à pied à travers l'Himalaya in 1998. In 1999 and 2000, he and photographer Priscilla Telmon crossed the steppes of central Asia from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan on horseback. That trip led to two books: La Chevauchée des steppes in 2001, and Carnets de Steppes: à cheval à travers l'Asie centrale in 2002. In 2001 and 2002, he participated in archaeological expeditions in Pakistan and Afghanistan.