{"product_id":"9781590515501","title":"The Center of the World: A Novel of J. M. W. Turner and His Lost Painting","description":"Alternating between nineteenth-century England and present-day New York,  this is the story of renowned British painter J. M. W. Turner and his  circle of patrons and lovers. It is also the story of Henry Leiden, a  middle-aged family man with a troubled marriage and a dead-end job, who  finds his life transformed by his discovery of Turner’s \u003ci\u003eThe Center of the World\u003c\/i\u003e, a mesmerizing and unsettling painting of Helen of Troy that was thought to have been lost forever.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThis  painting has such devastating erotic power that it was kept hidden for  almost two centuries, and was even said to have been destroyed...until  Henry stumbles upon it in a secret compartment at his summer home in the  Adirondacks. Though he knows it is an object of immense value, the  thought of parting with it is unbearable: Henry is transfixed by its  revelation of a whole other world, one of transcendent light, joy, and  possibility.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBack in the nineteenth century, Turner struggles to create \u003ci\u003eThe Center of the World\u003c\/i\u003e,  his greatest painting, but a painting unlike anything he (or anyone  else) has ever attempted. We meet his patron, Lord Egremont, an  aristocrat in whose palatial home Turner talks freely about his art and  his beliefs. We also meet Elizabeth Spencer, Egremont’s mistress and  Turner’s muse, the model for his Helen. Meanwhile, in the present, Henry  is relentlessly trailed by an unscrupulous art dealer determined to get  his hands on the painting at any cost. Filled with sex, beauty, and  love (of all kinds), this richly textured novel explores the  intersection between art and eroticism.","brand":"Other Press, LLC","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47134234804464,"sku":"9781590515501","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781590515501_p0.jpg?v=1763803787","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781590515501","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}