This was a beautifully written and well-researched novel about the aids crisis in the 80s. I felt like this book combined a lot I recall reading about in the news. I thought the story was raw, heartbreaking, and thought-provoking.

This is a fascinating look at the French end of things around the time that AIDS was being discovered, and how it tied in to the author's family (his uncle was one of the first diagnosed victims in France). This is catyegorized as a novel, but it feels like a blend of history and memoir, so might be closer to autofiction, honestly? Either way, it's a hell of a look at the macro and micro scales of the AIDS crisis.

I'm not entirely sure how to describe this book. It was beautifully written and obviously incredibly well researched. I loved the alternating chapters switching focus between the very insular family story and then the wider world-shifting scientific work being done. Passeron mainly focusses on those two things - the scientific community desperately attempting to understand, to find a cure or anything at all to slow the progression of HIV/AIDS and how one family in a tiny French village is impacted by this epidemic.
I didn't know about the work happening in France at this time, so much writing on HIV/AIDS fixates on America and New York City in particular so this was a welcome change, as was the focus on drug users rather than the majority of work that focusses on the LGBTQ+ community (not that we shouldn't have that, the two (and more) focusses can and should coexist!). It is another interesting and important perspective. The family sections were so wonderfully conveyed, the specifics and "characters" were so real and compelling. I do, however, wish it was clearer about how much of this is true and how much is embellished. It's marketed as fiction but autofiction is more apt possibly? The science is all real, the family existed - it's Passeron's own family - and yet somewhere along the line some of the story is fictionalised? That was just one factor that might have inhibited how deeply I connected with this, simply because I didn't quite know where I stood with the narrator. (though now reading other reviews maybe I'm misinterpreting, maybe that whole part was fiction after all? I'll do more research...) But I can't say I didn't connect deeply anyway, what a haunting, important piece of work. And, when considering the bigger picture, it doesn't really matter, these things did happen, the people did lose their lives and these families were forced to try and deal with that, the specifics come secondary to the fact that this happened millions and millions of times in some way or another and we need to keep talking about it.

Rendered into clear distant prose from the French by Frank Wynne, Passeron's Sleeping Children is an oddly heartbreaking book whose pendulum swings between the creeping spread of AIDS and an intimate intergenerational history, between the Institut Pasteur and a small town pinned in-between the Alps and the Côte d'Azur, between plague and family tragedy, tragedy in tragedy in statistics.

i loved this? a lot more than i’d been anticipating. i thought the tone and its honesty made the work feel alive.

it did take some time to get into but once the stories grew closer it was difficult to set aside without thinking about what was done next. you could tell the translation was from french, but i thought it to be a reminder of where this story started, so i didn’t mind. it was all very informative and eye opening.

i thought the snapshots of the science while following the derailment of a hardworking family and their hard earned business made the story move. the pride standing in the way on both sides was a roadblock i couldn’t help but be angry at.

heartbreaking to see that the majority of kindness towards the victims of aids really only came from the people trying to figure out and fight the illness. it was jarring how so many people were treated as insignificant and contagious even still in death.

it makes you ask yourself what could’ve happened and how many lives could’ve been saved if information wasn’t withheld and this sickness was taken seriously from the start.

This was an absolutely beautiful exploration of a family hit by the AIDS crisis in rural France. I loved the way it was cut between the French research and a personal saga. The arrogance of the American doctors was so frustrating to read but the lyrical prose almost made me forget how many lives the pride of US institutions cost us. I finished it and immediately wanted to read it again.

In Sleeping Children, Anthony Passeron wrote about two battles in the early worldwide war against HIV/AIDS: one of which was the French researchers’ incredible effort in identifying, containing, and understanding the virus that took millions of lives in one huge swoop; and the other, that of a family suddenly faced with a sickness they could not comprehend, much less accept. This was a read that truly hollowed me out through emotional punches that still landed despite Passeron’s detached writing style. Its autobiographical quality, with the book serving as the narrator’s “last-ditch attempt to ensure that something survives” out of his family’s story, made it all the more affecting. With chapters about the real-life endeavors and failures that outnumber the successes in the face of HIV and with both stories ending with death and the knowledge that “the epidemic has not been eradicated”, the book was bound to be absolutely heartbreaking. However, the underlying strength and hope, no matter how flickering and weak, that flowed from the scientists to Passeron’s characters could not be ignored.

Passeron’s novel is also a story that is almost unheard of when talking about AIDS—a disease once called “gay cancer” and whose fictional retellings always center on a homosexual man’s struggle. The title referred to the slumber-like states of overdosed heroin addicts found on the streets. “These sleeping children lay with their eyes rolled back in their heads, one sleeve rolled up, a syringe hanging from the crook of their arm. They were impossible to rouse.” The book then, most importantly, shed light on the fact that HIV/AIDS could and would affect anyone in spite of their sexuality and on the struggle of this other marginalized group that were also equally repellent to most people. And with that, in spite of its heavy subject, the importance and intelligence of Anthony Passeron’s Sleeping Children cannot be forgotten.

Anthony Passeron’s Sleeping Children (Les Enfants endormis) is a haunting and intimate literary debut that bridges the personal and the political with remarkable grace. At once a family memoir and a chronicle of the early AIDS epidemic in France, the novel is a powerful meditation on grief, silence, and the cost of forgetting.

The story unfolds in two interwoven threads: one follows the author’s own family in a small town near Nice, where his uncle Désiré, a charismatic and troubled young man, falls into heroin addiction in the 1980s and contracts HIV. The other thread zooms out to the scientific battle against AIDS, focusing on the pioneering work of French researchers like Luc Montagnier and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi.

Passeron’s prose—translated beautifully by Frank Wynne—is spare, lyrical, and emotionally precise. He writes with the urgency of someone trying to rescue a name from oblivion, to give voice to a generation of “sleeping children” lost to drugs, disease, and stigma. The novel’s title becomes a chilling metaphor for the forgotten, the silenced, and the dead.

What makes Sleeping Children so compelling is its refusal to sensationalize. Instead, it offers a quiet, devastating portrait of a family torn between love and shame, and a society slow to respond to a growing crisis. The juxtaposition of Désiré’s personal tragedy with the global scientific effort creates a narrative that is both intimate and expansive.

Set against the backdrop of the start of AIDS epidemic in France, Sleeping Children tells the story of one family's own quiet crisis. Just as doctors and researchers are mystified by rhe appearance of a novel disease, French families grapple with confusion and stigma as their youths, the "sleeping children," are found to be addicted to opioids--and then victims of that same mysterious disease. Passeron beautifully weaves the two stories together. An important piece of history given breath in this moving story.

I especially found the novel to be an especially valuable reminder of the history of the AIDS epidemic at present, when so many people around the world have lost access to HIV medications. A timely read.

Sleeping Children by Anthony Passeron Translated by Frank Wynne (thank you @fsgbooks @netgalley for the eARC)

Sleeping Children alternates between two interconnected threads: one focusing on the history of HIV/AIDS from the perspective of French physicians and researchers, and the other on how the virus ravages one family’s life. Placed side by side this weaves a compelling narrative of a medical community desperate to unravel this mystery with the deeply personal impacts and consequences of the virus experienced by the author’s family.

When I saw the “MMWR” heading on the first chapter I knew I would connect with this book. Just a few years after the later parts of this book take place, I began a career working in settings that involve HIV testing, treatment, education, and prevention. I was grateful for the in-depth history that taught me a lot that I didn’t already know as well as seeing it from the French perspective. I appreciate how Passeron conveys the complexities of scientific work including the political systems this work is done within, the trials and errors, and the competition.

The second, more personal, thread provided such a beautiful complement to the history. I don’t want to say much about this aspect but the experience of Passeron's family offers a heartbreaking illustration of the human impacts of the virus. I thought this part of the narrative would be filled with more emotion, but Passeron is researching and discovering the history of his family just as much as he is the virus. His family’s experience was shrouded in secrecy, leaving Passeron to piece together what he shares with us. This made this novel even more impactful for me.

This book was uniquely suited for my interests and tastes, but it is compelling and compulsively readable. I couldn’t put it down, couldn’t stop thinking about it, couldn’t stop talking about it. But more importantly, it’s a history that needs to be told and remembered so it doesn’t repeat, a story of one family that represents many, and a beautiful way of bringing the millions of lives lost back into the light. Highly recommended.

Surprisingly heartbreaking, even if the tone is detached and the familial drama is contrasted to the bigger struggle to get a grip on the AIDS epidemic in the face of stigma, denial and silence
Social as well as physical death

Sleeping Children by debut writer Anthony Passeron focuses on the AIDS crisis in 80s France. Breaking the silence in a small village working class family near Nice, where a butcher father never speaks about his deceased brother.
Through 60 short chapters we get to know the trajectory of the uncle of the author and the struggle by scientists to get a handle on the disease spreading and on how to stop the dying of young patients.
What is very clear is that the fact that the disease most impacted sectors of the population considered marginal formed a major factor in the deadliness and the lack of initial response by authorities, in the book most symbolised by the unwillingness of the prestigious Institute Pasteur to engage in combatting the AIDS epidemic.

I initially found the personal history of the family of the author, which focuses on a concurrent (and similarly “hush-hush”) drugs epidemic in rural Southern France, much less engaging than the clinical discovery in respect to the AIDS epidemic. The detached way of narration, almost faux journalistic, reminds me of both Annie Ernaux and Éric Vuillard, but works less well with the personal segments in my opinion.

The stories in the egos and arrogance, and rivalry between the US and French scientific community, inhibiting accurate identification of the virus then again lead to infuriating reading. Laboratories refused to analyse blood, stating that they do not work for queers or junkies.
Lack of beds leading patients with 40 degree fever being turned away.
Corpses not washed and dressed but buried in lead lined coffins.
Petitions to remove seropositive children from school.
And combination therapy drugs being initially so scarce that patients are to be entered into a lottery according to the national AIDS council of France.

Devastatingly emotional these stories of young death and crippling abandonment due to stigma and fear, and impacting celebrities like Michael Foucault and Rock Hudson, who was not accepted on any commercial airline on a return flight from France to the US when his diagnosis became public.

The last, short section of the novel, that details the impact across generations, is devastating. I don't cry or feel overly emotional due to reading often, but this short account cuts deeps, is impressive and deserves a wide reader audience.

Originally published in French, Passeron’s debut autofiction traces two stories with overlapping timelines that run through both parts of his book. The first story retells the historical facts of an unknown illness that a small group of scientists study. Due to the stigma surrounding the “‘at-risk’ groups” including individuals identified as “homosexuals, heroin addicts[,] and haemophiliacs,” with “[a] high proportion of [Haitian] victims,” other scientists and the public hesitate to embrace the progression of the scientific research. Moreover, the prominent French scientists, Luc Montagnier, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, and associates (Willy Rozenbaum, Jacques Leibowitch, Jean-Claude Chermann, et al.), navigate political dynamics with American researchers as these two main groups run lab tests on trial patients and publish journal articles. Their trials’ three-fold criteria observes “clinical progression of the disease, mortality rates[,] and changes in T4 cells.”

In the second story, Passeron searches for his family’s secrets as they relate to the AIDS epidemic and heroin use. Set in the Nice countryside, Passeron’s paternal uncle, Désiré, becomes addicted to heroin during his trip to Amsterdam and contracts what we would come to know as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and AIDS. Passed through the use of unclean needles, the family’s pride and joy—the educated eldest son—dies of a pulmonary embolism in 1987 at the age of 30. Passeron does not provide the specifics of Désiré's wife Brigitte’s life and health, but we learn that she also dies from AIDS. Their mothers labor together to raise their granddaughter, Émilie, who contracts HIV from Brigitte, either in utero or during her birth in 1984.

In 1996, protease inhibitor drugs are made available for patients with HIV, but the virologists’ breakthrough had not come soon enough. In November, Émilie died from AIDS before the dormant virus “reached its absurd conclusion,” destroying her body and poisoning her simple family’s dreams. Sleeping Children pays homage to the unconscious children who were high on heroin in the streets during broad daylight in the early 1980s. I would definitely consider incorporating this book into my curriculum if I were teaching a middle school class on the AIDS epidemic. The story of Passeron’s stolid family’s internal fissures and external dynamics within their town, running a butcher shop in France, oscillates well with the historical facts behind the scientific community. In other words, it makes sense to intertwine the research history with a personal story set in France because of the French’s early and monumental involvement with the ongoing search for a cure for AIDS.

Sleeping Children reads factually—it is informative and not as emotionally engaging as I expected, even in the sections about the Passeron family. Passeron highlights how people respond differently to the curious illness, such as the religious link to sin and morality and preventative measures like condoms, which JP2 opposed. I vividly remember learning about HIV/AIDS in grade 8, and this novel would have been an accessible and lucid resource to be introduced to the facts surrounding the disease. Frank Wynne translated Sleeping Children to English.

My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an ARC. I also shared this review on GoodReads on April 28, 2025 (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7519251020).

Sleeping Children covers two stories alternatively. The first is the non-fiction history of HIV and AIDS. It tells the history from the first known cases that alerted medical scientists, to all the research and experimentation involved in figuring out the how and why, to the treatments and trials. The second story is an incredibly believable fictionalized tale about a French family and their personal history with AIDS.

In the fiction story, the POV 'author' tells of his uncle, a man addicted to heroin. His family try many times to help him through his addiction, but he is too far into his sickness and with this addiction, he and his girlfriend contract HIV, and when his girlfriend gets pregnant with their child, the family wait to see if the unborn child will also be sick.

The non fiction was fascinating to read, and the fiction was so believable I had to double check to make sure it wasn't a true account of the author's real family. I was attached to these characters and their lives, waiting to see if things would improve for them. It was a great read and I will be purchasing a copy when I can.

Wow ! Just wow! Passeron weaves together a family memoir and a chronicle of the early AIDS crisis—moving between the silence surrounding his uncle’s diagnosis and the medical world’s search for answers.

As a queer man, I found it deeply moving to read about those who looked beyond the stigma and dedicated their time to finding a cure. A raw, necessary look at the impact of the AIDS crisis—the people that were silent, and those who refused to give up in the face of it.

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the e-ARC via NetGalley. These opinions are my own.

"For researchers, the looming threat is ever
more apparent: the possibility of a pandemic"

SLEEPING CHILDREN by Anthony Passeron tells the history of AIDS and the story of a family in souther France whose lives got ploughed over by the pandemic. In 1981, the first wave of AIDS hit the USA and later, France. The French scientists saw an uncanny similarity between the two, something peculiar, something that's gonna connect a lot of dots in the history of diseases.

Considered as 'Gay Syndrome' in the early times, spread in the close circle of homosexuals, drug addicts and haemophiliacs, this books tells the intricate history of the identification, isolation and analysis of the Human Immuno Deficiency Virus and its attributions in the lives of humans, families and the social stigma attached to it. Alternating chapters, one telling the common life of the author's family getting intertwined with the syndrome and the other, telling the scitific exploration of the syndrome, this book gave me everything that I needed to know about AIDS. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and it gave me a lot of valuable informations. As someone who's majoring in life sciences, this was half of a textbook and half of a gripping novel to me.

The author's family story made me realize how far and painstakingly long family members would go to save the life of one of them, embrace them even when they are hurting and stay with them until the very end.

I hope Émilie finally got to see what peace is, that her fragile soul finally felt the scent of Normality, that she never had to suffer from the curse her parents left her with.

That she's shining brighter than any stars.

Thank you FSG and NG for the Advance Reader Copy!!

Thank you to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and Anthony Passeron for allowing me to read this gutwrenching and important before its publication date in exchange for an honest review.

I genuinely think this might be the best book I have read this year. I found myself needing to read faster and faster. I finished this book in two sittings, I just could not put it down. It moved me in a way that is currently unspeakable.

As a queer man, I have a level of familiarity with the AIDS crisis and its impact on my community, the reason why many queer people became queer elders. However, Sleeping Children takes an intense and personal dive into the author's family's experience with AIDS after his uncle was diagnosed due to his heroin addiction.

The book narratively follows two stories, the author's family's experience with AIDS and several French scientists as they try and uncover what is causing the epidemic. I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves any form of nonfiction, this book is for lovers of biographies and scientific history.

Told in chapters alternating between the French doctors trying to find a cure for AIDS and the modern day as the narrator attempts to explore his own family’s history, Sleeping Children attempts to paint a picture of the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in a rural French town and its impact on a family. This book is really hard to review, in particular because it is seemingly a fictionalization of the author’s own family history, and that personal aspect does come through at times. But the tonal shift between the doctors’ and Passeron narrating his family’s history is incredibly jarring and I found it ineffective. The chapters that followed the doctors read more as a history book, a relatively well-done, if brief, history book, but a history book, nonetheless. The other chapters are narrated from the current time but detail the author’s uncle’s struggles with addiction and subsequently his contraction of AIDS. I was somewhat curious to read a book following the AIDS epidemic, where the focus is on its impact on addicts and also on people who aren’t American, but the entire book just feels very surface level. It really needed to be longer to properly explore any of the themes present, or to choose to focus on either the doctors or the family. The narrative style makes it feel incredibly detached from the characters and so you also feel detached from what they’re going through and unfortunately, I just don’t think it’s a book that will stick with me at all.

I absolutely adore Anthony Passeron’s prose. Sleeping Children is a compelling blend of family biography and an essay on the early days of the AIDS epidemic, with a strong focus on the social isolation of the first patients and the challenges of early research. It explores themes of shame, stigma, rejection, and silence in a way that is both touching and deeply unsettling.

If you appreciate the work of Annie Ernaux, this might be right up your alley. The small-town atmosphere and the informational sections are particularly strong and memorable. My only wish is that the portrait of the author’s uncle, Désiré, had been more vivid—I remember his life story but not quite the person behind it.

Still, this is a powerful and contemplative read, and I highly recommend it.

4.25⭐️

[a copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher from netgalley. thank you!]

a challenging and powerful novel about the AIDS epidemic. well worth a read

Anthony Passeron tells the story of his uncle Désiré, who died young, a few years before Anthony was born in the early 1980s.

There is a clear taboo around uncle Désiré death:

"My father and grandfather never mentioned him. My mother always cut short her explanations, and always with the same words: ‘It was all terribly sad, really.’ As for my grandmother, she dodged every question with mindless euphemisms, with stories of the dead people going to heaven and watching over the living here below."

What follows is a dramatic story of growing up in a small and boring French village in the 1960s and 70s, where Désiré started using marihuana and later heroine.

In parallel chapters Passeron gives a factual overview of the discovery and spread of the AIDS virus, focusing on the rival medical teams and researchers in the US and France trying to isolate the virus and then find a cure.

Passeron makes the timelines of the family history and the medical history coincide, so we follow the rise of the virus with the decline of Désiré.

I found it very convincing and tragic at times, especially towards the end.

The style is simple and straightforward as usual with French autofiction.

Highly recommended.