Sad Tiger

Winner of the Prix Femina and the Goncourt des Lycéens in 2023 and the Strega Prize in 2024, the book that shook France to its core, “ Like Annie Ernaux or Sheila Heti, Neige Sinno has created a powerful new literary autobiographical form. Through its radical honesty, and also through its thoughtful interrogations into the nature of life and literature, Neige Sinno shares with her readers her journey from someone who considered her life to have been stolen from her to someone who over the twenty years that elapsed from her reporting the rape to writing this book, somehow got her life back, all without ever being able to erase or even change what had happened to her as a child. “Reading This international literary phenomenon--the title inspired by William Blake’s poem It is through the craft of her narrative and her powerful direct analysis of the deep-seated taboo that Sinno explores the different facets of memory, her own, her mother’s, as well as her abusive stepfather’s; and of abuse itself in all its monstrosity and banality. How do we become who we are? What remains unsaid in families? How is society implicated? This harrowing auto-fictional account of the author''s sexual abuse as a child is mediated through analysis of various literary texts, including works by Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Christine Angot, and Virginie Despentes. In this unparalleled work that contains a thousand questions, a thousand jewel-like insights, there is an abiding concern: how to protect others from the rape, the incest that she herself endured? In the midst of so much darkness, an answer reads crystal clear: by speaking up and asking questions. A striking, shocking, and necessary masterpiece. Winner of the US and UK Goncourt Prizes, 2024 Winner of the Goncourt Prizes in Belgium, Slovakia, India, Turkey, Tunisia, and South Korea, 2023 Winner of the European Strega Prize, 2024 Winner of the Goncourt des Lyceens, 2023 Winner of the Femina Prize, 2023 Winner of the Le Monde Literary Prize, 2023 Winner of the Inrockuptibles Prize, 2023 Shortlisted for the Medicis Prize, 2023 Shortlisted for the Decembre Prize, 2023...

Auteur

NEIGE SINNO is a French writer who has studied American literature in the United States and Mexico, and worked as a translator and literature professor. She is the author of two previous books, Le Camion and La Vie des rats. Born in France, she has lived in Mexico for the past 20 years. Her 2023 book, Triste tigre, won several of France’s top literary prizes and became the publishing sensation of the year. It is published in English as Sad Tiger by Seven Stories Press, in a translation by Natasha Lehrer.

NATASHA LEHRER is a prizewinning writer and translator. She writes regularly for the Times Literary Supplement, the Observer, and The Guardian among many others and translated works by Chantal Thomas, Vanessa Springora, Amin Maalouf, Victor Segalen, Robert Desnos, and Georges Bataille. In 2016 she was awarded the Scott Moncrieff prize for Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Léger. She lives in France.

Texte du rabat

*Winner of multiple prizes, Neige Sinno has created a powerful literary form with *Sad Tiger, a book that took France by storm and is an international phenomenon.

“Reading Sad Tiger is like descending into an abyss with your eyes open. It forces you to see, to really see, what it means to be a child abused by an adult, for years. Everyone should read it.” —Annie Ernaux

Sad Tiger is built on the facts of a series of devastating events. Neige Sinno was seven years old when her stepfather started sexually abusing her. At 19, she decided to break the silence that is so common in all cultures around sexual violence. This led to a public trial and prison for her stepfather and Sinno started a new life in Mexico.

Through the construction of a fragmented narrative, Sinno explores the different facets of memory—her own, her mother’s, as well as her abusive stepfather’s; and of abuse itself in all its monstrosity and banality. Her account is woven together with a close reading of literary works by Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Christine Angot, and Virginie Despentes among others.

Sad Tiger—the title inspired by William Blake’s poem “The Tyger”—is a literary exploration into how to speak about the unspeakable. In this extraordinary book there is an abiding concern: how to protect others from what the author herself endured? In the midst of so much darkness, an answer reads crystal clear: by speaking up and asking questions. A striking, shocking, and necessary masterpiece.

Winner of the Le Monde Literary Prize, 2023
Winner of the European Strega Prize, 2024
Winner of the Prix Femina, 2023
Winner of the Goncourt des Lycéens, 2023
Winner of the US and UK Goncourt Prizes, 2024
Winner of the Le Monde Literary Prize, 2023
Winner of the Inrockuptibles Prize, 2023
Shortlisted for the Medicis Prize, 2023
Shortlisted for the Decembre Prize, 2023
Winner of the Goncourt Prizes in Belgium, Slovakia, India, Turkey, Tunisia, and South Korea, 2023