Description

** SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2023**
** WINNER OF THE 2022 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S LITERARY AWARD IN FICTION**

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vulture, The Times Literary Supplement, and more

What if this world is just a first draft, made by some great artist in order to be destroyed?

In this first draft, a woman named Mira leaves home to study. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal – to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and she enters that strange and dizzying dimension that true loss opens up.

Pure Colour tells the story of a life, from beginning to end. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling and a shape-shifting epic that is celestially bright and streaked with beauty.

‘Beautiful and impossible to put down. Sheila Heti is a genius.’ Avni Doshi

‘This one-of-a-kind novel… feels nothing less than vital.’ Observer

‘An original, a book that says something new for our difficult times.’ Anne Enright, Guardian

‘A treat.’ Stylist

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PRAISE FOR SHEILA HETI:
‘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

Publisher Review

An impressive spectrum of meaning and feeling, both abstract and tangible... This one-of-a-kind novel... feels nothing less than vital. -- Anthony Cummins * Observer * Pure Colour is the apocalypse written as trance, a sleepwalker's song about the end of all things... This is a novel that is happy to compass contradictions. It is a system, not an opinion... There is also Heti's lovely prose to enjoy, her beautifully sustained tone, the way she is, as a writer, earnest, funny and sweet... Pure Colour is an original, a book that says something new for our difficult times. It's a bit mad, but I think you will like it. -- Anne Enright * Guardian * Exemplifies both originality and sharpness... the kind of book that you start reading again as soon as you finish it, to see how on earth the author pulled it off... Descriptions of grief that are so surprising and true they made me gasp. -- Hadley Freeman * Guardian * Pure Colour is not just a novel, it's a creation myth, a fairy tale, a story about making art and living on this planet. A story about death and the irresistible inner stirrings that bring us back to life. Beautiful and impossible to put down. Sheila Heti is a genius. -- Avni Doshi Wonderfully entertaining... a treat to read. Expect to take in the work of a true wordsmith, as Heti turns something deeply saddening into a natural process that has many brighter notes. -- Kiran Meeda * Stylist *