Sylvain Tesson

Writer, journalist and traveller, Sylvain Tesson is France's 'most brilliant travel writer' (L'Express). After a world tour by bicycle in 1993-1994, he developed a passion for Central Asia, and in 1997 he crossed the Himalayas on foot, 5000 kilometres from Bhutan to Tajikistan.For seven months in 2003, he followed the journey of escapees from the gulag, which took him from Yakutsk in Siberia to Calcutta in India on foot and brought him to international prominence with his remarkable travelogue, Axis of Wolf.

Consolations of the Forest is his first book about staying still. It won the Prix Medicis in 2011.