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Born in 1977 in the Hautes-Alpes region of France, and after having spent many years in Mexico as a writer, Neige Sinno today lives in the French Basque country. Having completed her doctoral and postdoctoral studies in contemporary North American literature, she made her debut in 2007 with La vie des rats (The Life of Rats), a short story collection focussing on themes of youth and loneliness, and the 2018 novel, Le Camion (The Truck).
Yet, her pièce de résistance is her 2023 work Triste Tigre (Sad Tiger), a recipient of several prestigious awards including the Prix Femina 2023, the Le Monde Literary Prize 2023, the 2024 Strega European Prize, the Prix Goncourt des lycéens 2023, and the Choix Goncourt Prize India 2023.
A survivor of child sexual abuse at the hands of her own stepfather, Sinno had pressed charges against the perpetrator at nineteen, leading to a public trial and conviction. In this book, the author reflects on these experiences in a very unconventional fashion. She coolly analyses the mind of a man who coerces a child into sex acts, and the taboos around incest, paedophilia, and sexual abuse. Her cerebral yet nonlinear contemplations about her childhood are lined with literary references, including to Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov.
In fact, even the title of the book is a direct reference to William Blake’s poem, “The Tyger”—particularly the line “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”. Sinno reinterprets this question for her own trauma, struggling to reconcile the existence of innocence and kindness with the capacity for monstrous acts within a single person.
Sad Tiger (Seven Stories Press, 2025), translated by Natasha Lehrer, was shortlisted for US National Book Award 2025.
Book
Sad Tiger (Seven Stories Press, 2025)
