Sylvain Tesson is the son of Marie-Claude Tesson and Philippe Tesson, the journalist who founded Le Quotidien de Paris in France.

Stephanie Tesson, an actress, and Daphne Tesson, an art journalist, are his sisters. He has a background in geography and a degree in geopolitics.

Tesson and his friend, writer, and documentary filmmaker Alexandre Poussin, set out on a bicycle trip worldwide.

He crossed the Himalayas on foot, covering 5,000 kilometers in five months. They rode across the Central Asian steppes.

All of these expeditions and many others have resulted in a large body of literary work.

Tesson is also an amateur archeologist who has participated in archeological expeditions in Pakistan and Afghanistan due to his hobby.

Sylvain lived in complete seclusion in a cabin on the shores of Lake Baikal in southern Siberia in 2010.

The Consolations of the Forest-Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga, his award-winning autobiography, depicts this period.

Tesson also contributes short stories and film reviews to various magazines and his documentary essays. He was awarded the Prix Goncourt for short stories in 2009 and the Prix Médicis for articles.