Colored Television

Description

“A riveting and exhilarating novel about making art and selling out…Senna is one of this country’s most thrilling writers.” –Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

A brilliant dark comedy about love and ambition, failure and reinvention, and the racial- identity-industrial complex from the bestselling author of Caucasia

Jane has high hopes that her life is about to turn around. After a long, precarious stretch bouncing among sketchy rentals and sublets, she and her family are living in luxury for a year, house-sitting in the hills above Los Angeles. The gig magically coincides with Jane’s sabbatical, giving her the time and space she needs to finish her second novel—a centuries-spanning epic her artist husband, Lenny, dubs her “mulatto War and Peace.” Finally, some semblance of stability and success seems to be within her grasp.

But things don’t work out quite as hoped. Desperate for a plan B, like countless writers before her Jane turns her gaze to Hollywood. When she finagles a meeting with Hampton Ford, a hot producer with a major development deal at a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer,” and together they begin to develop “the Jackie Robinson of biracial comedies.” Things finally seem to be going right for Jane—until they go terribly wrong.

Funny, piercing, and page turning, Colored Television is Senna’s most on-the-pulse, ambitious, and rewarding novel yet.Praise for Colored Television:

“[A] brilliant, of-the-moment, just really almost perfect book.”—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED

“A complex and satisfying portrait of a woman struggling with the categories that define her.” –Publishers Weekly

“I couldn’t stop turning the pages, and only when it was all over did I realize what Senna had done. Addictive, hilarious and relatable, yes, but Colored Television is after something larger and more elusive, a very modern reckoning with the ambiguities triangulated by race, class, creativity and love. She nails it.”—Miranda July, author of All Fours and The First Bad Man

“A riveting and exhilarating novel about making art and selling out, about being middle aged and precariously middle class. As fearless as she is funny, Danzy Senna is one of this country’s most thrilling writers.” —Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

“Colored Television is hilarious. Senna writes with tenderness about the debasement of aspiration, and renders with acuity the mad place in the mind where fixation and avoidance are joined.” —Raven Leilani, author of Luster

“If you thought California was burning before, wait until you read how literary arsonist Danzy Senna gleefully incinerates its values through the eyes of Jane Gibson—a heroine whose insecurity, mistakes, and lies will keep you riveted from start to finish.” —James Hannaham, author of Delicious Foods and Nobody Gives a Shit What Happened to Carlotta

“Twisty, turny, and refreshingly relatable. You’ll read and wonder, ‘Is she in my head?’ I adore this novel.”—Mateo Askaripour, author of Black Buck

Danzy Senna is the author of four previous works of fiction, including the bestselling Caucasia and, most recently, New People, as well as a memoir. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, she teaches writing at the University of Southern California.US

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