Discipline
One of the Most Anticipated Debuts of the Year
Published on 5. February 2026
978-1-80522-672-7 (ISBN)
Description
When two people fall apart, who gets to tell their story?
Christine is a young writer touring her debut novel - a thinly disguised tale of the affair she had with her professor ten years earlier. He was magnetic, domineering, both the sponsor of her early promise and its destroyer. But he surely forgot her long ago, and the temptation to exorcise her past was overwhelming.
Then, between hotel rooms and bookstores, formal dinners and road-trip hook-ups, she receives a series of sly, unsettling emails and finally an invitation to visit the professor's isolated house on an island off the coast of Maine. Against her better judgement, Christine is drawn back into his orbit, risking forever losing control of the narrative she's worked so hard to create.
Taut and provocative, Discipline walks the lines between creativity and control, truth and memory, coercion and desire.
Christine is a young writer touring her debut novel - a thinly disguised tale of the affair she had with her professor ten years earlier. He was magnetic, domineering, both the sponsor of her early promise and its destroyer. But he surely forgot her long ago, and the temptation to exorcise her past was overwhelming.
Then, between hotel rooms and bookstores, formal dinners and road-trip hook-ups, she receives a series of sly, unsettling emails and finally an invitation to visit the professor's isolated house on an island off the coast of Maine. Against her better judgement, Christine is drawn back into his orbit, risking forever losing control of the narrative she's worked so hard to create.
Taut and provocative, Discipline walks the lines between creativity and control, truth and memory, coercion and desire.
Reviews / Votes
A delicate, wry, taut, suspenseful reading experience, Discipline captivated me from beginning to end. Larissa Pham is an original, real talent -- Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins Lush and precise, Discipline reads like a taut thriller even though it is really an elegant exploration of creativity -- Roxane Gay With a clarity and crispness that gives the atmosphere of a thriller, Discipline braids life, art and the fictions we tell ourselves -- Marlowe Granados, author of Happy Hour Art bleeds into life in Larissa Pham's exhilarating, exquisite book, full of an eerie intelligence and startling compassion. A pitch-perfect novel -- Ayseguel Savas, author of The Anthropologists Discipline wrecked me in the best way. To say that it is brilliant is an understatement. This astonishing book changed me; I'm not the same person I was before I read it -- Elaine Hsieh Chou, author of Disorientation The best book I read this year: intensely smart, evocative, and gorgeously written. Not only a gripping and suspenseful revenge story, Discipline is also a novel of ideas. It asks the hardest questions about art and death and the responsibilities we all have to one another. -- Stuart Nadler, author of Rooms for Vanishing Praise for Larissa Pham: 'Her gaze is ceaselessly empathetic, and it is this generosity that binds the reader to her quest for understanding. Even with all the pain of heartbreak... Pham manages to generate sincere hopefulness * Observer * A masterclass in emotional vulnerability... pivots between art and personal narrative with such dexterity that they begin to feel inseparable * Nylon * Combines the thrilling and agonized travails of her young narrator with the lucid and steady eye of a born critic ... A bold and promising debut -- Melissa Febos, author of Body WorkMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Profile Books Ltd
Product notice
Reflowable
File size
1,50 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-80522-672-7 (9781805226727)
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
Book
approx. 01/2027
Profile Books Ltd
€13.00
Not yet published
Book
02/2026
Serpent's Tail
€21.50
Available immediately
Person
Larissa Pham is the author of the essay collection Pop Song, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard prize. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Aperture and elsewhere. Discipline is her first novel.
