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.

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