Well-Red Bear Review of Books: You Are Your Path

A walking journey through France’s vast interior becomes a meditation on both personal recovery and the role of history in the present—more than 425,000 copies sold in FranceOn the Wandering Paths is the result of a free-climbing accident that put Sylvain Tesson in a coma and a hospital for four months. He promised himself that if he ever walked again, he would walk across France. The book is by turns an autobiographical travel journal and a philosophical critique of modern life. Originally published there to much acclaim, this new English version was translated by our friend Drew S. Burk, who also wrote the Afterword. He rightfully described the book to me as “a powerful and complex work.”

The walk is as transformative as it is a means of transport. “As soon as my eyes would open in the early morning light,” Tesson writes, “the fire deep inside was already stoking itself for the day’s movement. These were the moments I perhaps cherished the most in life: quick plunges into obsession.”

Review at Well Red Bear.