''The Bride Stripped Bare'' is a 2003

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

written by the Australian writer Nikki Gemmell, originally published

anonymously Anonymity describes situations where the acting person's identity is unknown. Some writers have argued that namelessness, though technically correct, does not capture what is more centrally at stake in contexts of anonymity. The important idea he ...

. The title is borrowed from the painting '' The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even'' (also known as ''The Large Glass'') by

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

. It went on to become the best-selling book by an Australian author in 2003.''Bookmarks by Jason Steger'',

The Age ''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria (Australia), Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Austral ...

, 31 January 2004 In 2005, it was announced that Australian screenwriter Andrew Bovell, who penned the award-winning film drama, '' Lantana'', was to adapt ''The Bride Stripped Bare'' for the screen. The book is written in the form of a diary by a young wife who has disappeared. In it, the author talks frankly about oral sex and love, and chronicles her relationship with a mysterious man she meets at a library group. The author has said that she "loved the idea of writing a book that dived under the surface of a woman's life, a seemingly contentedly married woman, and explored her secret world-with ruthless honesty". The act of writing the work anonymously, she has described as "liberating". A follow-up novel entitled ''With My Body'' was published in Australia and the UK in October 2011 and was scheduled to be published in the United States in 2012. According to the publisher, it is a companion piece but not explicitly a sequel to ''The Bride Stripped Bare''.

References

2003 Australian novels Works published anonymously Erotic novels {{2000s-erotic-novel-stub