Sylvain Tesson - Consolations of the Forest - Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga

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“…wry, exuberant and a perfect balm for anyone who dreams of running away to the middle of nowhere.”

“One of the best fall travel books."

“[One of] the best books of the year.”

“Like vodka thrown into a burning wood stove, this book blazes dangerously, beautifully, illuminating its subjects with mischievous flames of lyricism and wit. Brilliant and unforgettable.”

“This book is to be savored word by word. It is the diary of a man who spent six months by himself in a cabin on a Siberian lake. It contains beautiful and very evocative descriptions on the landscape, on solitude, on life, and on his numerous readings.”

“Holiday Catalog/Staff Pick: If you fantasize regularly about moving alone to a cabin in the middle of nowhere, Consolations of the Forest might just be for you. Light-footed, insightful, diversionary, wry and delightfully unpretentious (no transcendentalism here), Tesson’s book is the document of a vodka-fueled six-month solitude binge on the frozen edge of the deepest lake in the world.”

“ Consolations of the Forest [is] an extraordinary book… Tesson’s literary gymnastics and personal eccentricities aside, Consolations of the Forest is also a paean to the vastness of Siberia and a way of life that, surely against the odds, still survives. It is a page-turner but one in the which the words themselves pull us from page to page until, like Tesson, we come to the end and must finally return to a more quotidian existence.”

“Sylvain Tesson ventures where Thoreau only talked about—into the wilderness of nature and solitude. He writes with the lyrical cynicism of a Raymond Chandler about nature, kitsch, violence, herd behavior, and the glory of paying attention. Equipped with books, cigars, and vodka, plus a good knife and solar panels, Tesson takes time to look real life in the eye, and—in prose of startling clarity and candor—makes a spiritual quest both suspenseful and funny. ‘I will finally find out,’ he writes early on in his diary, ‘if I have an inner life.’ He does.”

“…the pleasures of the few neighbors Tesson has — and the company of two puppies — enliven the narrative. It’s almost enough to make the reader want to spend six months in isolation. Almost.”

“With The Consolations of the Forest , Tesson adds a modern voice to the rich literary history of contemplative nature writers like Thoreau and Emerson.”

“This book is to be savored work by word. I totally fell under the charm of its writing… I wanted to read and reread some passages, and that’s why I took time to write down quotations. I have not done so to that extent for a long time, proof that this book is really amazingly beautiful… the author has a knack for seeing the beauty everywhere around him… something new and very refreshing.”

“A French journalist’s eloquently philosophical diary of the six months he spent fulfilling his dream to ‘live as a hermit deep in the woods’ of Siberia. The deeper he probed his own mind and heart, the more aware he became of himself as just another animal, like the wolves and bears with whom he shared the landscape. Comparisons to Walden are inevitable and, to an extent, justified. Yet what makes Tesson’s work so refreshing is its freedom from Thoreau-vian moralizing. Solitude may be necessary and healing; but living life as a fully realized human being with attachments to society is an art rather than a thing to be despised. Moving, wise and profound.”

“Tongue in cheek? Perhaps. Yet, for all his playfulness, Mr Tesson is in earnest. He loves the taiga and understands the Russians’ almost mystical attachment to it. Move over Schopenhauer. Aika and Bek know where the ‘sweet spot’ is—the present moment, that special place ‘between longing and regret’ that Mr Tesson is ultimately in search of.”

Sylvain Tesson is a writer, journalist, and celebrated traveler. He has been exploring Central Asia—on foot, bicycle, and horse—since 1997. A best-seller in his native France, he is published all over the world—and now in the United States.

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published in France as Dans les Forêts de Sibérie 2011

First published in the United States of America by Rizzoli Ex Libris, an imprint of Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. 2013

First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane 2013

Copyright © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 2011

Translation copyright © Linda Coverdale, 2013