Meet the jury of the 30th Festival

Born in Paris on 26 April 1972, Sylvain Tesson studied geography and geopolitics with Yves Lacoste before devoting his life to writing and long-distance travel. He has relentlessly explored the world by bike, walked across the Himalayas, ridden horses through Central Asia and followed in the footsteps of gulag escapees from Siberia to India. He has also investigated the oil industry in the Caucasus and Anatolia, and taken part in humanitarian and archaeological missions in Afghanistan.

His adventures in the Russian Far East, Mongolia, the Himalayas and Tibet have inspired some fifteen books, essays and short stories, including Une Vie à Coucher Dehors (Gallimard, winner of the 2009 Goncourt and Académie Française Prizes for Short Stories), Dans les Forêts de Sibérie (Gallimard, winner of the 2011 Médicis Award for Essays), and La Panthère des Neiges (Gallimard, winner of the 2019 Renaudot Prize). He has also presented the TV programme Montagnes on the French channel France 3 and is a regular contributor to Le Figaro Magazine, as well as making documentaries for the TV channel France 5.

Sylvain Tesson, whose passions are climbing, literature and horse riding, spent six months living in a cabin in Siberia, an experience he describes in Dans les Forêts de Sibérie (Gallimard, 2011). In his most recent book, entitled Blanc (Gallimard, 2022), he tells of his adventures in the Alps. In 2024, he received the Combourg Prize for his book Avec les Fées.