Missing Pieces

By John Livesey

Last year, Anthony Passeron was teaching history in a French Lycée; today he is one of Europe’s most celebrated young authors. Passeron’s debut novel Sleeping Children is a family chronicle which offers a raw and urgent perspective on the AIDS epidemic. Delving into the author’s personal history, it tells the story of Passeron's uncle Desiré: the favoured son of the family, Desiré escapes his village in rural France to pursue his studies in the city. On a road-trip to Amsterdam, however, he is fatefully introduced to heroin. So begins a long and painful spiral into addiction. Barely recognisable to his family, Passeron’s uncle becomes one of the anonymous ‘sleeping children’ found on the streets of Europe’s cities. And it is here that he eventually contracts HIV from use of infected needles.

In conversation, Passeron describes Sleeping Children as his attempt to break the silence that has surrounded his uncle’s illness for over thirty years, thoughtfully uncovering how each generation of his family has been shaped and changed by the legacies of disease and addiction. Carefully interwoven with the central narrative, he uses a history teacher’s eye to relate an account of the French scientists who first discovered the AIDS virus, widening the novel’s lens to consider the global struggle to combat the pandemic. This is not just a story of an individual or a family, but of a whole society. Following in the footsteps of popular French writers like Édouard Louis, Annie Ernaux, or Didier Eribon, Passeron’s plain and direct prose shows the ways in which our lives are moulded by shame and social class.  

Sleeping Children was a surprise bestseller in France and has already been translated into 16 languages as well as winning the coveted Prix Première Plume, a prize for literary debuts. Ernaux herself described the book as ‘a work so powerful, so moving that it lingers long after reading.’ The novel was released in the UK in March 2025, translated by Frank Wyne. Shortly after publication day I had the pleasure of speaking with Passeron over Zoom. We discussed the novel’s themes, inspirations, and its effect on the author’s family.

ORB I wanted to start by asking: what made you decide to tell your family’s story?

AP I saw it as a kind of responsibility. I knew that my family was unable to speak about these issues. As a family, we are classically Mediterranean, you know, always talking very loudly. But when there was a question about my uncle, no one had anything to say. If you wanted everyone to stop speaking, you just had to ask a question about him. When I was maybe 10 or 12, I don’t know, I saw on the TV that the French version of ACT UP was staging a protest in Paris about the pandemic. And I remember asking myself why are those people able to talk? Why are they able to act? And why isn’t my family able to do the same?

ORB You mention ACT UP, a protest-organisation that has become a really important part of the way we remember the AIDS pandemic. However, your book offers quite a different version of this history, one that readers may not have encountered before. Did you feel it was important to offer another perspective on the experience of AIDS?

AP When I grew up, I read a lot of books about AIDS. In France there have been a lot of successful authors who’ve written about AIDS — authors like Hervé Guibert. But it was always about the queer dimension of the pandemic, the urban dimension of the pandemic, and especially the intellectual dimension of the pandemic. I used to see the history of the AIDS pandemic as like a big puzzle with a lot of missing pieces, you know? I wanted to bring one missing piece to that story, the piece that I knew firsthand. The story of people on drugs, of rural communities. I never get up in the morning saying, oh yes, I’m gonna be a writer. No, I said, if there is a missing story, maybe I can allow myself to write it, you know?

ORB Interwoven with your family’s story is an account of the French scientists who first discovered the virus. Why did you decide to have these histories running parallel, and what do you think these twin narratives reveal about each other?

AP To start with, I only wanted to write my family’s story. But because they were so reticent to speak, I had to do a huge amount of research about the AIDS pandemic. And I discovered another very important story, the story of those few French doctors who discovered AIDS and attempted to find a cure. When I started writing the book, it dawned on me how much the two stories responded to each other. They represent parallel lines of courage, of loneliness, of uncertainty. I guess also wanted to show that shame was not only something my family felt. Shame is a social thing. To help readers understand why my grandmother could feel so ashamed, I felt I had to remind everyone of the violence of the AIDS pandemic and the ways it was talked about in French society, especially in the media.

ORB I wanted to ask about the title. The book was published as Les Enfants Dormis in French and then Sleeping Children in English. There’s something ambiguous in that phrase, ominous even. What does the title mean to you?

AP At first, I didn't have a title. You see, I didn't ever think that my book would be published. And then when I did find a publisher in France, they asked me: do you have a title? I decided I would pick one of the chapter-titles and I thought that ‘Sleeping Children’ would be an interesting choice. You see, in French, there's a particular poetic resonance because asleep — 'endormi' — also means forgotten or disappeared.  I thought that was really evocative because, after all, I wanted to tell the story of a generation who has been forgotten. And it was also interesting because my grandfather never talked about my uncle's illness or his drug habit: he only ever said that he found his son sleeping in the street.

ORB You mentioned that you'd been inspired by lots of AIDS literature. But I also read traces of other French writers in this book, particularly autofictional writers such as Didier Eribon, Annie Ernaux and Édouard Louis. Were you consciously influenced by these authors when you decided to tell your story, which is largely based on the truth?

AP Certainly. I was a teacher when Édouard Louis published The End of Eddy. At the time, I was looking for new writing to give my pupils. I worked in the Parisian suburbs, and I wanted something that would interest them. And then I bought The End of Eddy. You know, I have nothing in common with this guy. He’s so much younger than me. He came from the North of France. He’s gay. He came from a very, very poor family. But his work made me realise that I have so many stories to write. It was so inspiring. He’s the one who made me realize that I wanted to write.

ORB In England, the book is published as a novel. But as you say, this isn’t necessarily fiction. How would you categorise the work?

AP My French publisher was a fairly young publisher and they wanted to be known as publishers of fiction, so they wrote ‘novel’ on the book. But that was a commercial necessity. I don't know if it’s really a novel because everything I say is true. And there is maybe 10% of it that is fiction. But that fiction is just because I wanted to simplify reality a bit for the narrative dynamic of the book. Nowadays, there’s a big trend of autofiction, especially in France. But when you say it’s autofiction, it sets up a game between the reader and the writer, to work out which parts are true and which parts aren’t. I think it feels very strange to play that kind of game, especially with your own life. In my eyes, this book is the truth.

ORB Given how raw and honest this account of your family’s history is, I wanted to ask how your family members have responded to its publication and success?

AP They are really proud that their son, or their nephew, has published a book. But they would have preferred it if I’d written a neighbour’s story, you know? It’s a big contradiction. Because they are really happy for me, but they would still want to forget this story. Once my aunt phoned me and said, why did you write about this story that I've been trying to forget for thirty or forty years? And we had a big, big discussion about it. I was telling her, again and again: if you have been trying to forget this story for 40 years, and you still can’t, maybe that's because the story is actually unforgettable. Maybe it’s because we have to do something with it. Maybe it’s a story that needs to be told.

ORB It must also be strange for you that a story you’ve held in yourself for so long is now out in the world. What has the book’s success meant to you?

AP Each time the rights for the book are sold in another country, I call my mother. She still lives in the village. And I always ask the same questions, why do people want to know our story? I think I’ve learned that maybe it’s because, in lots of ways, we have a very common story. And there’s a huge satisfaction in that, because it’s a way of achieving what I always wanted to do and breaking through my family’s loneliness. Every time I go to another country, there is someone waiting for me with the book who says, it’s not only your story, it’s also my story. There is always an uncle or a brother, or a father. And they say, this is our story. It’s really warm to discover that broader family of people who have been touched by the AIDS pandemic. I’m building another family in that way.

ORB You said that you were led to writing this book by the feeling that you had important stories you needed to tell. After the text, are you working on another book?

AP At the end of Sleeping Children, I said my father left. He left his family, he left his child, he left his job, he’s left his village. I wanted to tell that story in Sleeping Children, but my publisher said, “Anthony, this is another book.” So the next book is the story of my relationship with my father. It’s an attempt to understand how a father can disappear, can decide one day to stop being a father, to stop being a husband, can disappear completely. It’s really strange because this book is about to be published in France and, once again, the new publisher is going to say it’s a novel. It’s the same problem as the last time. I had to simplify things in this book, but everything is true. I mean, it’s history.

ORB And would you ever think of going back to teaching history? Or is writing now your way of sharing these stories?

AP I am definitely forever a teacher. When you’re a teacher, you have to take complex history and to make it understandable for people who don’t know anything. That’s what I’ve done in Sleeping Children, you know? I said, how can I make readers understand that complex story? How can I get their attention to be from one chapter to another one? It’s what I do every day with my pupils.

I guess that I also wanted to show my pupils that anyone could write. In France we have this tradition of placing writers and intellectuals on a pedestal, of saying “look, they are so important, so intelligent.” And so it’s really hard for them to imagine that they could write something, that they might also have something to say.

Sometimes I miss my pupils because they used to give me a lot of energy. It’s more and more difficult to be a teacher in France, maybe it’s the same in the UK. But when I dream some nights, I see myself at the school library. It would be a great way to come back because I’m so happy around books. It could be a great way to come back… just to stay amidst all the books.

JOHN LIVESEY is a writer and director. He is currently completing a PhD on the work of James Baldwin at UCL, funded by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership. He is also the recipient of a fellowship at the Deutsches Theater Berlin and is working on his first short film with ICA New Creatives.

Art by Cordelia Wilson