Colored Television

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award 2025
A brilliant dark comedy about love and ambition, failure and reinvention and the racial- identity-industrial complex from the bestselling author of Caucasia

Finalist for the 2025 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION and the ANISFIELD-WOLF BOOK AWARD IN FICTION.

Longlisted for the 2025 JOYCE CAROL OATES LITERARY PRIZE, the NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE FICTION PRIZE and the CARNEGIE MEDAL 2025.

Named a Best Book of 2024 by TIME , NPR, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK POST, ELECTRIC LITERARTURE, OPRAH DAILY and more!

'I LOVED this fresh, funny story . A true page-turner' Daily Mail
'Hilarious' Raven Leilani, author of Luster
'[A] gem from Danzy Senna . perceptive and bitingly funny' Vanity Fair

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.

Reader reviews:

'A fantastic novel . funny and ironic and clever'

'A clever satire of the entertainment industry and the compromises artists sometimes make. If you enjoyed Yellowface, you'll likely appreciate Senna's ability to blend humour with uncomfortable truths'

'This is so sharp & funny & MESSY . I could not wait to see how this one turned out and had a ball reading it'

'Provides a very gripping commentary on both the literary and television world . The story takes such an unexpected turn, and once it does I truly couldn't put it down'

Contributor: Priscilla Layne (Translated by)

Translator: Priscilla Layne

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