Used book – La Passagère du silence, Fabienne Verdier

Was it reasonable to leave everything overnight to go alone, to the depths of communist China, to seek out the forgotten secrets of ancient Chinese art? Fabienne Verdier didn't ask herself the question: in the early 1980s, the brilliant young Beaux-Arts student was drawn by the desire to learn this pictorial and calligraphic art devastated by the Cultural Revolution. And when, a foreigner and lost in Sichuan province, she found herself in an art school run by the Party, she was determined to face all obstacles: the language and the mistrust of the Chinese, but also the unbearable promiscuity, the surrounding squalor and dirt, illness and the inquisitorial administrative system... Forgetting the West entirely, she became the student of great artists who were despised and marginalized, and who initiated her into the secrets and codes of a thousand-year-old teaching.

From this unique experience were born a true adventure story and a fascinating personal work, which marries Eastern inspiration with contemporary art, and of which her extraordinary art book L'Unique Trait de pinceau (Albin Michel) bears witness.