White on White
  • Published: 15 August 2023
  • ISBN: 9781529115260
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $22.99

White on White

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A 'marvelous' (Lauren Groff) and riveting novel about a woman who has come undone.


Deeply humane, quietly devastating, mesmerisingly beautiful.' Olivia Sudjic

'Haunting, irresistible.' Brandon Taylor

'Marvelous.' Lauren Groff

A student moves to the city to research Gothic nudes, renting an apartment from a painter, Agnes, who lives in another town with her husband. One day, Agnes arrives in the city and settles into the upstairs studio.

In their meetings on the stairs, in the studio, at the corner café, the kitchen at dawn, Agnes tells stories of her youth, her family, her marriage, and ideas for her art - which is always just about to be created. As the months pass, it becomes clear that Agnes might not have a place to return to. The student is increasingly aware of Agnes's disintegration. Her stories are frenetic; her art scattered and unfinished, white paint on a white canvas.

What emerges is the menacing sense that every life is always at the edge of disaster, no matter its seeming stability.

White on White is a sharp exploration of empathy and cruelty, and the stunning discovery of what it means to be truly vulnerable, and laid bare.

'Gentle, mysterious and profound.' Marina Abramovic
  • Published: 15 August 2023
  • ISBN: 9781529115260
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $22.99
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Praise for White on White

White on White exerts the hypnotic pull of a mystery... A superb novel by an exceptionally elegant, intelligent, and original writer.

Sigrid Nunez

A haunting, irresistible novel. I loved this book for its depth and perception, for its beauty and eerie rhythms, but most of all for its wonderfully dream-like spell. It's breathtaking.

Brandon Taylor

Marvelous, as elegant as an opaque sheet of ice that belies the swift and turbulent waters beneath.

Lauren Groff

In the middle ages, human skin was seen as a blanket stretched to cover a secret, inner life, writes Aysegül Savas. Reading White on White for me is like an outer skin which you open layer by layer as you read; gentle, mysterious and profound.

Marina Abramovic

The story at the heart of White on White is - like the title - subtly camouflaged. The book moves through quiet seasons of study and observation circling around how pain and innocence are concealed, managed and represented. Savas's two women watch each other as they avoid themselves, in an acute and obliterating double portrait.

Leanne Shapton
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