Passenger of Silence: My Quest for the Ancient Arts in Post-Cultural Revolution China is Fabienne Verdier’s first-person account of her extraordinary journey as an art student living and studying in China in the years following the Cultural Revolution. Passenger of Silence has already been published in six different languages, but never translated to English; this new translation unlocks Verdier’s captivating story for anglophone audiences.
In Verdier’s transportative tale, first published and a bestseller in France in 2005, she tells her story, which begins with both a profound awareness of the need for solitude, and a conviction that what she was looking for in painting could not be found in Western art. A brilliant fine arts student in the early 1980s, she travelled to China where she would stay for several years, driven by a desire to learn first-hand the ancient Chinese arts of painting and calligraphy.
Accepted as an international student by one of the best – and most remote – fine arts schools in China at that time, the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, run by the Communist Party, Verdier finds herself isolated yet utterly determined to adapt to her new environment. While she observes the arduous dedication of the students and discovers inspirational folk legends within the peaceful oasis of secluded tea houses, she also encounters considerable poverty and squalor, with limited opportunities to access fresh running water, filthy living quarters and an unfamiliarly strict administrative system. Through perseverance and chance encounters, Verdier overcomes language barriers and intense isolation to develop her life in China and to eventually seek out and study under master artists practising in secret.
In this short video, hear an except from Corinna Thierolf's descriptive afterword to Verdier's memoire, which is now available to purchase online and in selected UK bookshops.
