European Book Club: Sad Tiger
Join the CGES for book club on May 2, 2025
Event Date & Time
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Event Location
Social Sciences Building, Room 309
267 S 19th Ave
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
Immerse yourself in the rich tapestry of European literature as we explore recent prize-winning European novels translated into English. Whether you’re a seasoned reader or just love a good story, this club is for you! With a good book, good conversations, light snacks and a drink, we can unwind together. Open to all. Join us on Friday, May 2, 4:00 - 5:30pm to discuss Neige Sinno's Sad Tiger (France, in English March 2025).
"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."
This book will stay with you.
This book will stay with you.
Be aware that it has passages that are shocking and hard to read.