Join the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith and the French Library for an in-store event with author Neige Sinno and translator Natasha Lehrer to discuss and celebrate the release of Sad Tiger. They will be in conversation with writer Nina MacLaughlin.

Winner of multiple prizes, Neige Sinno has created a powerful literary form with Sad Tiger, a book that took France by storm and is an international phenomenon.

“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.” —Annie Ernaux

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 19, she decided to break the silence that is so common in all cultures 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, Sinno explores the 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. It is published in English as Sad Tiger by Seven Stories Press, in a translation by Natasha Lehrer.

Translator Natasha Lehrer is a prizewinning writer and translator. She writes regularly for the Times Literary Supplement, the Observer, and The Guardian among many others and translated works by Chantal Thomas, Vanessa Springora, Amin Maalouf, Victor Segalen, Robert Desnos, and Georges Bataille. In 2016 she was awarded the Scott Moncrieff prize for Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Léger. She lives in France.

Moderator Nina MacLaughlin is the author of Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Massachusetts Book Award, as well as Summer Solstice and Winter Solstice, winner of the Massachusetts Book Award. Her first book was the acclaimed memoir Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter, a finalist for the New England Book Award. Formerly an editor at the Boston Phoenix, she worked for nine years as a carpenter, and now writes a column on New England Literary News. Her work has appeared on or in The Paris Review Daily, The Virginia Quarterly Review, n+1, The Believer, The New York Times Book Review, Agni, American Short Fiction, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Meatpaper, and elsewhere. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The French Library

Located in a historic mansion in Boston’s Back Bay, the French Library is a nonprofit cultural and educational institution dedicated to sharing the richness of French and Francophone cultures with the broader community. While rooted in French tradition, we celebrate global cultures and foster cross-cultural understanding through language, literature, and the arts. Home to the largest private collection of French books, periodicals, and DVDs in the U.S.—and part of the Alliance Française network—our library and language school serve curious minds of all ages. From lectures and film screenings to concerts, culinary events, and exhibitions, our dynamic cultural programming welcomes everyone, with many events offered in English. Discover where oui can take you: frenchlibrary.org