Pure Colour by Sheila Heti

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, frombeginning 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 Colourwonthe 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction.

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Sheila Hetiis a noted Canadian playwright and author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction whose work has been translated in over a dozen languages. Her playAll Our Happy Days are Stupidappeared on stages in New York and Toronto and her bookHow Should a Person Be?was a New York TimesNotable Book. Her novelMotherhoodwas on the shortlist for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Interviews with Sheila Heti

The Sunday Magazine16:42In Pure Colour, writer Sheila Heti uses humour to tackle the challenges of modern life

In her new novel Pure Colour, Canadian author Sheila Heti explores the idea that the world is an unfinished work of art, whose creator is getting ready to scrap and start over... because the first draft just didn't cut it. David Common speaks with Heti about the book's themes of grief, climate change and the human condition, along with the personal loss that shaped its narrative.

6:01Sheila Heti answers our Proust questionnaire

Sheila Heti on her favourite character in fiction, her greatest regret and more.

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 doesnt 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