Sylvain Tesson

Toujours autant de délectation à entamer un livre de Sylvain Tesson… et autant de déception à le terminer. Non pas parce que le récit était mauvais, mais parce qu’il faudra désormais attendre le prochain.

Bien que les contrées visitées et le mode de déplacement parlassent moins au montagnard d’un pays privé d’accès maritime que je suis, le plaisir de découvrir des réflexions intelligentes et de beaux mots sont restés les mêmes qu’avec les autres ouvrages de Tesson.… (mere)

Sylvain Tesson is an adventurer and traveller who has written numerous books about his overland treks. His travels are extreme, searching for the snow leopard in Tibet, or living like a hermit in a cabin in Siberia. He explored caves in Borneo and rode a motorcycle across Iceland. He travelled around the world in two years on a bicycle, and a few years later he trekked across the Himalaya, and these are just a few examples of his extreme journeys.

In 2014, Tesson had a accident, falling from a roof, and the following year he made his first trek through France. In the hospital bed he vowed that if he would recover he would hike across France.

In the introductory chapters, Tesson goes over some of the great European writers who wrote about hiking in France, notably Stevenson's Travels with a donkey in the Cevennes and Hermann Hesse's novella Knulp. He moans how useless it seems to travel to his starting point with the TGV high-speed train, only to walk back. Sur les chemins noirs is written as a diary, a walking journey from 27 August till 8 November. The books contains maps that show the extent of rural areas in south and central France, and the rural roads Tesson travelled. Tesson is much concerned with himself, in his inward monologues he describes the route, pondering people and literature. Descriptions of the landscape, mountains and vegetation are factual rather than lyrical. The tone of his interior monologues is anger and resentment. French literature has many other writers who describe the French countryside with passion, so utterly lacking from Tesson's book.

Sur les chemins noirs was filmed in 2023, and came out as On the Wandering Paths… (mere)