Description

Sheila Heti collected hald a millions words from a decade’s worth of journals, put them in a spreadsheet, and sorted them alphabetically. She spent the next ten years cutting and refining, and was left with 60,000 words of brilliance and mayhem, joy and sorrow. These are her alphabetical diaries.

Publisher Review

'Sheila Heti keeps transforming my idea of writing. Her Alphabetical Diaries isn't just dirty and funny and poignant; it reproposes everything you thought about a self and the way time passes.' - Adam Thirlwell, author of The Future Future 'Alphabetical Diaries is a testament to Heti's artistic power. She gently leads the reader into new dimensions of language previously undiscovered. Beautiful and uncompromising.' - Marlowe Granados, author of Happy Hour 'A book that is in many ways is an ode to the sentence; from the muscle of single line to the power that comes with accrual. An immersive and hugely entertaining read.' - Sinead Gleeson author of Constellations 'I am drawn to Sheila Heti's writing like a moth to a flame and Alphabetical Diaries is amongst the most affecting, exquisite books I've ever encountered. It is, simply put, utterly and startlingly good. Heti writes so creaturely, so bodily, that it feels like a whole new genre is being formed as we read.' - Kerri ni Dochartaigh author of Cacophony of Bone 'I'll read anything Sheila Heti writes.' - Lauren Oyler, author of Fake Accounts 'Like Iris Murdoch's novels, Heti's are philosophically intense, although Heti's work is pared down where Murdoch's was Rabelaisian.' - Dwight Garner, New York Times 'By fragmenting and then formulaically rearranging these personal records, Heti has reinvigorated them as more than a journal, brought them to life as a fascinating book which highlights the consistency and inconsistencies of us all, how our minds flit from subject to subject to elsewhere. It is a warm-hearted, individual, exploration of what it is to be alive, what it is to be human.' - Rupert Loydall, Tears in the Fence 'Pure Colour is the apocalypse written as trance, a sleep-walker's song about the end of all things... an original, a book that says something new for our difficult times.' - Anne Enright, Guardian (on Pure Colour) 'Buoyed by a dazzling assortment of questions, curiosities and wild propositions that betray the author's agile and untamed mind... [Pure Colour] brings into view a certain organic and ecstatic wholeness: bright splashes of feeling and folly, of grief and loss... [It] defies classification.' - Alexandra Kleeman, New York Times Book Review (on Pure Colour) 'Exhilarating... it made me want to write.' - Sally Rooney, on How Should a Person Be? 'Sheila Heti has broken new ground.' - Rachel Cusk, on Motherhood 'Complex, artfully messy and hilarious.' - Miranda July, on How Should a Person Be? 'Thrilling, very funny, and almost unbearably moving.' - Garth Greenwell, on Motherhood 'Courageous, necessary, visionary.' - Elif Batuman, on Motherhood