Neige Sinno on Sad Tiger
Reading Sad Tiger is like descending into an abyss with your eyes open. It forces you to see, to really see, what it means to be a child abused by an adult, for years. Everyone should read it.
Join us for an evening with Neige Sinno, author of one of the most important and innovative books of recent years, Sad Tiger (tr. Natasha Lehrer) a literary exploration into how to speak about child abuse. In conversation with Adam Biles.
Free & open to all. Places limited. Arrive early to avoid disappointment. Most events take place on our first floor, which is accessible by stairs. If you have any concerns about access, please don't hesitate to contact us.
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Winner of multiple prizes, Neige Sinno has created a powerful literary form with Sad Tiger (tr. Natasha Lehrer), a book that took France by storm and is an international phenomenon. Sad Tiger is built on the facts of a series of devastating events. Neige Sinno was seven years old when her stepfather started sexually abusing her. At the age of fourteen or fifteen the abuse stopped. At nineteen, she decided to break the silence around sexual violence. This led to a public trial and prison for her stepfather and Sinno started a new life in Mexico.Through the construction of a fragmented narrative, woven together with documents and thoughts in the manner of a personal investigation, Sinno exploresthe different facets of memory—her own, her mother’s, as well as her abusive stepfather’s; and of abuse itself in all its monstrosity and banality. Her account is woven together with a close reading of literary works by Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Christine Angot, and Virginie Despentes among others. Sad Tiger—the title inspired by William Blake’s poem “The Tyger”—is a literary exploration into how to speak about the unspeakable. In this extraordinary book there is an abiding concern: how to protect others from what the author herself endured? In the midst of so much darkness, an answer reads crystal clear: by speaking up and asking questions. A striking, shocking, and necessary masterpiece.
NEIGE SINNO is a French writer who has studied American literature in the United States and Mexico, and worked as a translator and literature professor. She is the author of two previous books, Le Camion and La Vie des rats. Born in France, she has lived in Mexico for the past 20 years. Her 2023 book, Triste tigre, won several of France’s top literary prizes and became the publishing sensation of the year.
