🌟 "Sad Tiger" by Neige Sinno

I read the Dutch translation, Trieste tijger, translated from French into Dutch by Martine Woudt. The English version was translated by Natasha Lehrer. One of the best non-fiction books I've read so far this year. One that makes it hard to have clear thoughts to express afterwards, which is a good thing. This is a memoir about the author's youth, in which she was sexually abused by her stepfather for many years. Once she'd come of age and left her childhood home, she spoke about it to her friends, then to her mother, and eventually the system. There's a trial, the stepfather goes to a cushy prison, comes out, starts a new life with a different young wife and kids. What now? The author has her own life and her own family. The trauma of what was done to her lives on in everything. Now what? This is more than a reflection on child abuse and sexual violence. It questions what people we see as monsters and why. It also wonders about the what and how of literature like this: who writes it…