Advance Access Event: Sheila Heti

Join Sheila Heti in conversation with Mitzi Angel, SVP and Publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

October 14, 2021 @ 1:00 PM ET

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More about PURE COLOR:

The world is failing to remain a world. It is coming apart. The ice cubes are melting. Species are dying. People, too—of different things. But what if this world is just a first draft, made by some great artist in order to be destroyed?

In this first draft of the world, 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 his spirit passes into her. Together, they become a leaf on a tree. But photosynthesis gets boring, and being alive is a problem that cannot be solved, even by a leaf. Eventually, Mira must remember the human world she’s left behind, including Annie, and choose whether or not to return.

PURE COLOUR is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and an absurdly funny guide to the great (and terrible) things about being alive. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.