L'Usage du monde

L'Usage du monde (English translation by Robyn Marsack as The Way of the World) is a travel literature book written by the Swiss writer Nicolas Bouvier illustrated by Thierry Vernet and first self-published in 1963 − a decade after the event − at the Librairie Droz. This work tells the story of Bouvier and Vernet's journey from Geneva to the Khyber Pass from June 1953 to December 1954, aboard a small Fiat 500 "Topolino" (the story actually begins in Travnik in July 1953). Over the years and re-editions, the book became in the last decade of 1900 a «masterpiece of French travel literature». In addition to the precise description of his journey, the author places great emphasis on the people he meets and invites the reader to marvel at the world as he strolls and to let himself be “reshaped” by the journey. These same themes will come up in several other works by Bouvier such as Chronique japonaise (Japanese chronicle), Le poisson-scorpion (The scorpion fish) or Journal d'Aran et d'autres lieux (Aran's diary and other places). In 2006, Éditions L'Âge d'Homme published, under the title Peindre, écrire chemin faisant (Painting, writing on the way)”, the correspondence that Thierry Vernet sent almost daily to his family along this journey.