Sheila Heti Book order
Sheila Heti is acclaimed for her distinctive literary voice, which delves into the intricate tapestry of human relationships and existential quandaries. Her works are characterized by an introspective and philosophical tone, inviting readers into profound reflections on life's complexities. As an interviews editor, Heti has cultivated a reputation for her lengthy, incisive dialogues that probe the essence of her subjects. Her writing is celebrated for its originality and its capacity to evoke deep emotional and intellectual responses.







- 2024
- 2024
A thrilling confessional from the award-winning author of Pure Colour, in the vein of Joe Brainard and Edouard Levé.
- 2022
A Garden of Creatures
- 40 pages
- 2 hours of reading
The book explores the intricate dynamics of a specific location, revealing its cultural significance and historical context. It delves into the lives of its inhabitants, showcasing their struggles, triumphs, and the unique traditions that shape their identity. Through vivid storytelling and rich detail, the narrative uncovers the impact of external forces on the community, highlighting themes of resilience and belonging. The author's insightful perspective invites readers to connect deeply with the place and its people.
- 2022
Heartbreaking, exciting, profound- a short epic that reimagines what the novel can do After God created the heavens and the earth, he stood back to contemplate creation, like a painter standing back from the canvas. This is the moment we are living in - the moment of God standing back. In this first draft of existence, 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. This is a book about the shape of a life, from beginning to end. It's about art, critics, and ageing. It's about the surrounding world - sky, trees, lakes, stars - and 'the world beyond this world', which can be glimpsed in rare moments when something shattering occurs. Pure Colour is a galaxy of a novel- explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It's a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and its shape-shifting, mystical form allows us to take in the whole world in one glance. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.
- 2018
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018
- 297 pages
- 11 hours of reading
BANR 2016 A wealth of strong material makes The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016 valuable reading.- PopMatters What they have given us is a gift.... One wonders how the world might be different if works in Best American Nonrequired Reading were indeed required. - USA Today BANR 2015 [T]his eclectic collection soars more often than it sags...the stories that truly stick are those that are slightly unnerving and offbeat, of which there are many. - USA Today
- 2018
From the author of How Should a Person Be? (“one of the most talked-about books of the year”—Time Magazine) and the New York Times Bestseller Women in Clothes comes a daring novel about whether to have children. In Motherhood, Sheila Heti asks what is gained and what is lost when a woman becomes a mother, treating the most consequential decision of early adulthood with the candor, originality, and humor that have won Heti international acclaim and made How Should A Person Be? required reading for a generation. In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti’s intimate and urgent novel considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking guidance from philosophy, her body, mysticism, and chance, she discovers her answer much closer to home. Motherhood is a courageous, keenly felt, and starkly original novel that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how—and for whom—to live.
- 2016
The Babysitter at Rest
- 168 pages
- 6 hours of reading
“I had to judge a story contest of 600+ anonymous stories and I read each one and without hesitation Jen George’s story was my favourite. I’m so happy this collection exists. I feel drunk with love for these stories. They’re so funny and weird and true.”—Sheila Heti“With a weird, beautiful energy, George explores the challenges of woman-being: singlehood, self-doubt, motherhood, the dismaying fact of aging, the (dis)ability to love. A modern-day Jane Bowles, George engages these mysteries in prose that is funny, charming, dark, and insightful.” —Deb Olin UnferthFive stories—several as long as novellas—introduce the world to Jen George, a writer whose furiously imaginative new voice calls to mind Donald Barthelme and Leonora Carrington no less than Kathy Acker and Chris Kraus. In “Guidance/The Party,” an ethereal alcoholic “Guide” in robes and flowing hair appears to help a thirty-three-year-old woman prepare a party for her belated adulthood; “Take Care of Me Forever” tragically lambasts the medical profession as a ship of fools afloat in loneliness and narcissism; “Instruction” chronicles a season in an unconventional art school called The Warehouse, where students divide their time between orgies, art critiques, and burying dead racehorses. Combining slapstick, surrealism, erotica, and social criticism, Jen George’s sprawling creative energy belies the secret precision and unexpected tenderness of everything she writes.
- 2015
On Love
- 240 pages
- 9 hours of reading
In a novel that explores the realities of "being in love," two young people meet on a plane to Paris and embark on a love affair based on what they perceive as destiny. A first novel. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.
- 2014
Women in Clothes
- 515 pages
- 19 hours of reading
"An exploration of the questions we ask ourselves while getting dressed every day, and the answers from more than six hundred women"--From back cover.
- 2013
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2013 Sheila's twenties were going to plan. She got married. She hosted parties. A theatre asked her to write a play. Then she realised that she didn't know how to write a play. That her favourite part of the party was cleaning up after the party. And that her marriage made her feel like she was banging into a brick wall. So Sheila abandons her marriage and her play, befriends Margaux, a free and untortured painter, and begins sleeping with the dominating Israel, who's a genius at sex but not at art. She throws herself into recording them and everyone around her, investigating how they live, desperate to know, as she wanders, How Should a Person Be? Using transcripts, real emails, plus heavy doses of fiction, Heti crafts an exciting, courageous, and mordantly funny tour through one woman's heart and mind.


