Bernard Ollivier

Award-winning travel-writer, novelist, and environmental/social-justice activist Bernard Ollivier is the author of the four-volume Longue Marche series, the chronicle of his multi-year trek from Lyon, France to Xi’an, China. Born in 1938 in the French department of the Manche, one of his earliest memories is the arrival of allied paratroopers on D-Day in June 1944. After obtaining his high-school diploma in 1964, and a degree in journalism in 1965, he would spend the next thirty-plus years writing for a variety of French publications and news outlets, including Combat, Le Figaro, Le Matin, Paris Match, and La Première chaîne. In April 1998, he retired and moved to the Norman countryside, although he maintained his connections with the capital. His greatest success came following his retirement. Alone after the death of his wife and not knowing what to do with his life, he set out to hike the Way of Saint James, from the boulevard Saint-Jacques in Paris to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. It was a transformative experience. Upon completing the journey, he returned home with two resolutions: first, to find a way to help troubled youths get their lives back on track by embarking on long walks, just as he did; and second, to undertake yet another long walk himself. And so, in April 1999, he set off to solo-hike the Great Silk Road, from Istanbul, Turkey to Xian, China, a journey which he would accomplish in four stages (May-July 1999, May-September 2000, June-September 2001, and April-July 2002). The three-volume narrative of the journey (Phébus) became an unexpected best-seller in France and would earn him the 2001 Joseph-Kessel Prize. The trilogy has been translated into many languages (German, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish...), including English (Out of Istanbul, Walking to Samarkand, Winds of the Steppe, all Skyhorse Publishing). As for his other resolution, in 1999, Ollivier founded the Seuil Association, a nonprofit that organizes long walks for young adults having a hard time finding their place in society. More recently, in collaboration with his now-partner-in-life—actress, singer, and stage director Bénédicte Flatet—he founded Air.e, an organization seeking to increase awareness of the climate crisis and, more specifically, to establish a series of eco-villages where residents can live sustainably, in harmony with nature. In 2015, Ollivier took up his partner’s challenge to “complete” his Silk-Road journey by hiking from the once European silk capital of Lyon, France to Istanbul, Turkey, a two-stage journey (Lyon-Verona 2013 and Verona-Istanbul 2014) that he undertook with Flatet by his side. Their narrative (Phébus 2016 and, for the English translation, Skyhorse 2023) unexpectedly added a fourth volume to his three-volume Silk-Road epic. In addition to his various social and environmental activities, Ollivier continues to write, whether from his home in Normandy or on the road. "Walking nurtures dreams. It poorly accommodates structured thinking. The latter is more at ease in contemplation: eyes half closed, the body supported by a soft cushion of fine sand, stretched out in the shade of the pines. Walking is action, momentum, motion. When the body is hard at work, the mind—constantly solicited by imperceptible changes in the landscape, such as a passing cloud, a gust of wind, puddles on the path, a rustling wheat field, the crimson of cherries, the fragrance of cut hay or of flowering mimosas—begins to panic and break down, for it loathes the constant work. The mind forages, harvests, and reaps images, sensations, and scents; it then sets them aside for later on when, back at the hive, it’s finally time to sort through them and give them meaning." Bernard Ollivier, Out of Istanbul, Skyhorse Publishing, 2019. Photo credit: Gil Fornet.