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  • Published: 17 March 2020
  • ISBN: 9781760896645
  • Imprint: Penguin Random House Australia Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 12 hr 59 min
  • Narrator: Thomas Larkin
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $34.99

The Origin of Me




A beguilingly original and satirical debut novel of friendships, imagination, and the bodies we live in

Lincoln Locke’s fifteen-year-old life is turned upside down when he’s thrust into bachelor-pad living with his father, after his parents’ marriage breaks up, and into an exclusive new school. Crestfield Academy offers Lincoln a new set of peers – the crème de la crème of gifted individuals, who also happen to be financially loaded – and a place on the swim relay team with a bunch of thugs in Speedos. Homunculus, the little voice inside his head, doesn’t make life any easier; nor does Lincoln’s growing awareness of a genetic anomaly that threatens to humiliate him at every turn.

On a search for answers to big LIFE questions, he turns to the school library, where he spies a nineteenth-century memoir, My One Redeeming Affliction by Edwin Stroud, a one-time star of Melinkoff’s Astonishing Assembly of Freaks. As Lincoln slowly reads this peculiar, life-changing book, the past reaches into his present in fascinating and alarming ways.

Ways that defy imagination . . .

Audacious, funny and wonderfully inventive, The Origin of Me is a song to friendship, to young love, to the joy of imagination, and to celebrating differences.

  • Published: 17 March 2020
  • ISBN: 9781760896645
  • Imprint: Penguin Random House Australia Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 12 hr 59 min
  • Narrator: Thomas Larkin
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $34.99

About the author

Bernard Gallate

Bernard Gallate began his professional life in the animation industry with Hanna-Barbera, later working for Disney and a multimedia agency. After studying acting, he ran climbing tours of the Sydney Harbour Bridge for six years while writing and illustrating books for younger readers. Bernard currently teaches programs on early Sydney life and archaeology at historical sites across the city. The Origin of Me is his first novel.

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Video
At Home with Bernard Gallate

Welcome to the Penguin Long Weekend Literary Festival! Please enjoy Bernard Gallate’s author talk on his latest novel The Origin of Me. To purchase a copy, please go to this link https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-origin-of-me-9780143789628 We’d love to hear your thoughts via #PRHLongWeekend. Bernard Gallate began his professional life in the animation industry with Hanna-Barbera, later working for Disney and a multimedia agency. After studying acting, he ran climbing tours of the Sydney Harbour Bridge for six years while writing and illustrating books for younger readers. Bernard currently teaches programs on early Sydney life and archaeology at historical sites across the city. The Origin of Me is his first novel.

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