L'Origine

Winner of 5 major book awards, including thePublishers WeeklyU.S. 2021 Selfies Award for Best Adult Fiction and winner of theIndieReader2021 Discovery AwardLOrigine got me hookedwhat a story! Milgrom brings the reader right along on her adventures as a copyist of one of the most well-known paintings in all the world. Harriet Welty Rochefort, author of French Fried, French Toast, Joie de Vivre, and Final TransgressionThe riveting odyssey of one of the worlds most scandalous works of art.In 1866, maverick French artist Gustave Courbet painted one of the most iconic images in the history of art: a sexually explicit portrait of a womans exposed genitals. Audaciously titled LOrigine du monde (The Origin of the World), the scandalous painting was kept hidden for a century and a half. Today, it hangs in the world-renowned Orsay Museum in Paris, viewed by millions of visitors a year.As the first artist authorized by the Orsay Museum to re-create Courbets The Origin of the World, author Lilianne Milgrom was thrust into the paintings intimate orbit, spending six weeks replicating every fold, crevice, and pubic hair. The experience inspired her to share her story and the paintings riveting clandestine history with readers beyond the confines of the art world.LOrigine is an entertaining and superbly researched work of historical fiction that traces the true story of the paintings unlikely tale of survival, replete with French revolutionaries, Turkish pashas, and nefarious Nazi captains. But LOrigine is more than a riveting romp through historyit also sheds light on societys complex relationship with the female body.