Bøger af Sylvain Tesson

- Der er et dyr i Tibet, som jeg har forfulgt i seks år, sagde Munier. Det lever på højsletterne. Man må gå langt for at se det. Jeg skal tilbage dertil til vinter, tag med mig. - Hvad er det for et dyr?- En sneleopard, sagde han.- Jeg troede, den var forsvundet, sagde jeg. Det er det, den vil have os til at tro.Sylvain Tesson er en berejst fransk forfatter. Uddannet geograf. I 1991 begiver han sig ud på sin første ekspedition i Island, efterfulgt af en jordomrejse på cykel med Alexandre Poussin i 1993.Det er her hans liv som eventyrer begynder. Han rider på hest tværs over de centralasiatiske stepper med udforskeren Priscilla Telmon - en rejse på mere end 3000 km, der strækker sig fra Kasakhstan til Usbekistan.Fra 2003 til 2004, følger han Gulagflygtningenes rute, som den bliver beskrevet i bogen “The Long Walk” (1955) af Slavomir Rawicz. Denne rejse tager ham hele vejen fra Siberien til Indien til fods.I 2010 beslutter han sig for at leve som eneboer i seks måneder i en hytte i Siberien lige ud til Bajkalsøen.Med en passion for bjergbestigning forsøger Tesson i august 2014 at kravle op ad facaden på et hus i Chamonix og falder ved et uheld ned, hvorefter han bliver lagt i kunstig koma. Han kom sig efter ulykken.Tesson fik i 2019 den prestigiøse Prix Renaudot for “Sneleoparden".

Winner of the Prix Renaudot 2019A New York Times Best Book of 2021`Extraordinarily beautiful¿ a long last loving glance at the planet.¿ Carl Safina, author of Becoming WildThe Art of Patience sees the renowned French adventurer and writer set off for the high plateaux of remotest Tibet in search of the elusive snow leopard. There, in the company of leading wildlife photographer Vincent Munier and two companions, at 5,000 metres and in temperatures of -25ºC, the team set up their hides on exposed mountainsides, and occasionally in the luxury of an icy cave, to await a visitation from the almost mythical beast.This tightly focused and tautly written narrative is simultaneously a dazzling account of an exacting journey, an apprenticeship in the art of patience, an acceptance of the ruthlessness of the natural world and, finally, a plea for ecological sanity.A small masterpiece, it is one of those books that demands to be read again and again.

In Consolations of the Forest, Sylvain Tesson explains how he found a radical solution to his need for freedom, one as ancient as the experiences of the hermits of old Russia: he decided to lock himself alone in a cabin in the middle taiga, on the shores of Baikal, for six months. From February to July 2010, he lived in silence, solitude, and cold. His cabin, built by Soviet geologists in the Brezhnev years, is a cube of logs three meters by three meters, heated by a cast iron skillet, six-day walk from the nearest village and hundreds of miles of track. To live isolated from the world while retaining one's sanity requires a routine, Tesson discovered. In the morning, he would read, write, smoke, or draw, and then devoted hours to cutting the wood, shoveling snow, and fishing. Emotionally, these months proved a challenge, and the loneliness was crippling. Tesson found in paper a valuable confidant, the notebook, a polite companion. Noting carefully, almost daily, his impressions of the silence, his struggles to survive in a hostile nature, his despair, his doubts, but also its moments of ecstasy, inner peace and harmony with nature, Sylvain Tesson shares with us an extraordinary experience.Writer, journalist and traveler, Sylvain Tesson was born in 1972. After a world tour by bicycle, he developed a passion for Central Asia, and has travelled tirelessly since 1997. He came to prominence in 2004 with a remarkable travelogue, Axis of Wolf (Robert Laffont). Editions Gallimard have already published his A Life of a Mouthful (2009) and, with Thomas Goisque and Bertrand de Miollis, High Voltage (2009). In 2009 he won the Prix Goncourt for A Life of a Mouthful, and in 2011 won the Prix M dicis for non-fiction for Consolations of the Forest: Alone in Siberia.

Med en passion for bjergbestigning forsøger Sylvain Tesson i august 2014 at kravle op ad facaden på et hus i Chamonix og falder ved et uheld ned, hvorefter han bliver lagt i kunstig koma. Han kommer sig efter ulykken, men lægerne fraråder ham al fremtidig klatring og vandring. I 2016 trodser han deres råd og begiver sig ud på en 3 måneders vandretur gennem det Frankrig hans mange rejser jorden rundt aldrig har givet ham tid til at besøge. Ad ukendte stier fortæller han fra de gemte og glemte dele af landet."Globetrotterforfatteren Sylvain Tesson har trawlet kloden tynd, men aldrig rigtig oplevet Frankrig. Det råder han bod på med en overdådigt velskrevet fortælling om sin vandring gennem fædrelandet.En forrygende og fortættede rejseberetning, der hurtigt transformeres til et vanvittigt velskrevet og nostalgisk portræt af et Frankrig, som er blevet knust af den kværnende blanding af globalisering og den evindelige galliske hang til administrativ orden og ensretning."Aske Munck, Weekendavisen"Sylvain Tesson iscenesætter sin egen bedagede rejsemaskulinitet med en naturlighed, der er både uironisk, på lange stræk latterlig, og dog samtidig mærkeligt læseværdig."Matthias Dressler-Bredsdorff, Information"Douchebag på afveje. Hvem har ikke – og måske især ved juletid – drømt om som rejsebogsforfatteren Tesson at skride fra det hele: arbejdet, telefonen, de sociale bånd og forpligtelser og forsvinde ud i verden?"Julie Gufler, FrihedsbrevetTesson fik i 2019 den prestigiøse Prix Renaudot for “Sneleoparden", der udkom på dansk i 2020.

Moscow to Paris in a sidecar: an epic, crazy 2,500 mile road trip following Napoleon's retreat

When Sylvain Tesson left the colourful yellow houses of the French Riveria for a ski trek across the Alps with his friend Daniel du Lac, a high-altitude mountain guide, he didn't know what exactly would await him.  Over the course of four years, from 2018 to 2021, they ascended high into the Alps in winter, following the curve of the mountains from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic, entering into a white world entirely of snow, bitterly cold and overlooked by an empty sky; only the effort of moving forward, one stride at a time, separated the days from one another.  He thought he was venturing into beauty but he was immersing himself in a substance. In the White of the high Alps all is cancelled out - hopes, fears, memories and regrets. What did he stand to gain by inflicting this ordeal on himself?  This was no ordinary mountain trek: it was communion with a substance.  Perhaps his longtime dream of transforming travel into prayer would come true at last.