Pure Colour

Here we are, just living in the first draft of creation, which was made by some great artist, who is now getting ready to tear it apart.

In this first draft, a woman named Mira leaves home for school. 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 the 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. (From Penguin Random House Canada)

Pure Colour is available in February 2022.

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Sheila Heti is a noted Canadian playwright and author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction whose work has been translated in over a dozen languages. Her play All Our Happy Days are Stupid appeared on stages in New York and Toronto and her book How Should a Person Be? was a New York Times Notable Book. Her novel Motherhood was on the shortlist for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize. 

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Interviews with Sheila Heti

Sheila Heti on getting into readers' minds with Motherhood

4 years ago

Duration 1:02

'The book is a really sort of a portrait of a consciousness,' says the 2018 Giller finalist.

The Next Chapter1:31Dog-Eared: Sheila Heti on The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols

Sheila Heti, the author of "Motherhood," on the reference book she's kept on her desk for 20 years.

The Next Chapter12:21Sheila Heti on Motherhood

Sheila Heti talks to Shelagh Rogers about her new book Motherhood.

The Next Chapter54:00Harold R. Johnson, Sheila Heti - The Full Episode

Harold R. Johnson on Clifford, Amy Millan from Stars on Heartbreaker, Dania Tomlinson on Our Animal Hearts, Sheila Heti on Motherhood and Antanas Sileika on 12 Rules For Life.

Sleepover27:26Sheila vs. the Internet

Author Sheila Heti is a shining literary light. But it seems the more popular she is, the more detractors there are. She doesn’t want to be paralyzed by online comments, but she refuses to ignore valid criticism

Q19:42'Women in Clothes' editors seek why, not how, of self-presentation

Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits and Leanne Shapton on their collection of essays about what women wear.

The Next Chapter11:29To plot, or not to plot... (Literary Smackdown)

The Next Chapter and Canada Writes have teamed up to present the Literary Smackdown: a series of great authorial showdowns about the ins and outs of writing. First up: Andrew Pyper and Sheila Heti go head to head on a classic question: to plot or not to plot. Is it better to plan out the plot of novel before you begin to write or go forth boldly onto the blank page to see where you end up?

Other books by Sheila Heti