Origin of the World

This spare, unforgettable novel is Pierre Michon’s luminous exploration of the mysteries of desire. A young teacher takes his first job in a sleepy French town. Lost in a succession of rainy days and sleepless nights, he falls under the spell of a town resident, a woman of seductive beauty and singular charm.   Yvonne. Yvonne. “Everything about her screamed desire…setting something in motion while settling a fingertip to the counter, turning her head slightly, gold earrings brushing her cheek while she watched you or watched nothing at all; this desire was open, like a wound; and she knew it, wore it with valor, with passion.” Michon probes the destructive powers of passion and the consuming need for love in this heartbreaking novel.

“Michon’s The Origin of the World is an astonishingly rich, mythic new direction in modern French narrative.” —Guy Davenport, “A slender book in length, but not in style and language.... Michon's short fable obliges us to recognize, within and beyond sexual fantasy, strains of cruelty directed toward beauty.” —Roger Shattuck, Harper's, "Lust is a common theme in literature, but rarely has it been expressed as poetically and profoundly as it is in prize-winning French author Pierre Michon's sliver of a novel, The Origin of the World."—Regan McMahon, San Francisco Chronicle , “A haunting, imagistic book, somehow both lush and spare.”—Martin Riker, Wall Street Journal

Pierre Michon is an author of high acclaim in France and Europe. He was winner of the Prix France Culture in 1984 for his first book, Small Lives, and of the 1996 Prix de la Ville de Paris for his body of work. He lives in France. Wyatt Mason, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a contributing editor at Harper's, has translated writing by Pierre Michon, Eric Chevillard, Michel de Montaigne, and Arthur Rimbaud. He teaches at Bard College.