Pure Colour

Heartbreaking, exciting, profound- a short epic that reimagines what the novel can do

'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

'Pure Colour is an original, a book that says something new for our difficult times.' Anne Enright, Guardian

'A treat to read.' Stylist

*A Guardian, Financial Times, New Statesman, Daily Mail, AnOther and Cosmopolitan Books for 2022 pick*

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 galaxy of a novel- explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and a shape-shifting epic. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.
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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

About the Author

Sheila Heti is the author of seven books, including the critically acclaimed How Should a Person Be? and is co-editor of the New York Times bestseller, Women in Clothes. She is the former interviews editor at The Believer magazine, and has been published in the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, McSweeney’s, Harper's and n+1. Her work has been translated into adozen languages. She lives in Toronto.