“Moving, wise and profound.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“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.”

—David George Haskell, author of The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

“Sylvain Tesson ventures where Thoreau only talked about. 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.”

—Michael Sims, author of The Story of Charlotte’s Web and the upcoming Adventures of Henry Thoreau

“The most brilliant of our travel writers lived for six months in the glacial isolation of a small log cabin in Siberia. Hardly a Thoreau figure sipping carrot juice, instead he guzzles vast quantities of vodka at subzero temps. This delightful memoir is a cross between Rousseau and Bear Grylls … filled with sarcastic yet pointed aphorisms, a sort of Walden on Smirnoff.”

—L’Express

“A breath of fresh air for those chafing at the narrowness of their lives.”

—Le Monde

“This is Man against Nature, the universe of Jack London, David Vann and Derzu Uzala, the wide-open spaces and Arctic winter.… Beautifully written, restrained, a song of the taiga, its harmonies resonate for a long time in the mind of the reader.”

—Le Nouvel Observateur

“[Tesson’s] writing is elegant and urbane, full of paradoxes, aphorisms, and conceits.… Mr. Tesson is in earnest. He loves the taiga and understands the Russians’ almost mystical attachment to it. He shudders at the occasional invasions of gun-toting businessmen in blaring 4×4s, and he walks for hours to meet odd loners in their scattered cabins. One of them gives him two puppies who become his much-loved companions and his wisest philosophers.… 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.”

—The Economist

“Tesson shares the detailed journal of his days in what should be the bleakest corner of the planet, but which turns out to be a rich and varied experience.… With The Consolations of the Forest, Tesson adds a modern voice to the rich literary history of contemplative nature writers like Thoreau and Emerson.”

—ForeWord Reviews