Pure Colour

'A story about making art and living on this planet...Beautiful and impossible to put down. Sheila Heti is a genius' Avni Doshi

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.

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 ― ObserverPure 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 ― GuardianExemplifies 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 ― GuardianPure 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 DoshiWonderfully 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

About the Author

Sheila Heti is the author of ten books, including the novels 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. She was named one of the 'New Vanguard' by the New York Times book critics, who, along with a dozen other magazines and newspapers, chose Motherhood as a best book of the year. Her novels have been translated into twenty-four languages. She lives in Toronto and Kawartha Lakes, Ontario.