Pure Colour
The prize-winning novel from the author of Motherhood, a New York Times best book of the year
Published on 17. February 2022
224 pages
978-1-4735-9132-5 (ISBN)
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
_______________________
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
** 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
_______________________
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
Reviews / Votes
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... 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. -- 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. -- Kiran Meeda * Stylist * What makes Heti's novels so compelling is... the questions her characters need answering at moments of flux in their lives... [Pure Colour] left me full of admiration and wonder. -- Johanna Thomas-Corr * New Statesman * An explicitly mystical book... So new...This book, so full of argument, feels weightless. -- Parul Sehgal * The New Yorker * Just like that, there's magic. Like Iris Murdoch's novels, Heti's are philosophically intense, although Heti's work is pared down where Murdoch's was Rabelaisian. Heti owns a sharp axe. In Pure Colour the wood chips that fall are as interesting as the sculpture that gets made. -- Dwight Garner * The New York Times * 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 * Heti excels at small moments, delicately revealed. * Daily Telegraph *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Random House (Digital)
File size
0,67 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-4735-9132-5 (9781473591325)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Sheila Heti is the author of ten books, including the novels Pure Colour, Motherhood and How Should a Person Be?, which New York magazine deemed one of the 'New Classics' of the twenty-first century and which was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her novels have been translated into twenty-four languages. She lives in Toronto and Kawartha Lakes, Ontario.
