Pick a Colour
- Author Souvankham Thammavongsa
- Narrator Zoe Doyle
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date 25 September 2025
- Run Time 4 hours and 49 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Modern and contemporary fiction.
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What to expect
Bloomsbury presents Pick a Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa, read by Zoe Doyle
From Giller Prize and O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa comes a revelatory novel about loneliness, love, labor, and class.
'I live in a world of Susans. I got name tags for everyone who works at this nail salon, and on every one is printed the name "Susan".'
‘One of the greatest novels I have ever read’ RITA BULWINKELL
‘Wickedly funny and moving’ AVNI DOSHI
‘A knockout: every punch lands’ ELEANOR CATTON
Ning is a retired boxer, but to the customers who visit her nail salon, she is just another worker named Susan. On this summer's day, much like any other, the Susans buff and clip and polish and tweeze. They listen and smile and nod. But beneath this superficial veneer, Ning is a woman of rigorous intellect and profound depth. A woman enthralled by the intricacy and rhythms of her work, but also haunted by memories of paths not taken and opportunities lost. A woman navigating the complicated power dynamics among her fellow Susans, whose greatest fears and desires lie just behind the gossip they exchange.
As the day's work grinds on, the friction between Ning's two identities – as anonymous manicurist and brilliant observer of her own circumstances – will gather electric and crackling force, and at last demand a reckoning with the way the world of privilege looks at a woman like Ning.
Told over a single day with razor-sharp precision and wit, Pick a Colour confirms Souvankham Thammavongsa's place as literature's premier chronicler of the immigrant experience, in its myriad, complex, and slyly subversive forms.
'Hauntingly good' ED PARK
‘Subverts the comforting mundane’ PITCHAYA SUDBANTHAD
‘A master over the sentence’ DAISY JOHNSON
Reader Reviews:
'Unlike anything I've read before, a talent to watch' (5-star review)
'The prose was liquid gold' (5-star review)
'I was devastated to finish it so soon' (5-star review)
From Giller Prize and O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa comes a revelatory novel about loneliness, love, labor, and class.
'I live in a world of Susans. I got name tags for everyone who works at this nail salon, and on every one is printed the name "Susan".'
‘One of the greatest novels I have ever read’ RITA BULWINKELL
‘Wickedly funny and moving’ AVNI DOSHI
‘A knockout: every punch lands’ ELEANOR CATTON
Ning is a retired boxer, but to the customers who visit her nail salon, she is just another worker named Susan. On this summer's day, much like any other, the Susans buff and clip and polish and tweeze. They listen and smile and nod. But beneath this superficial veneer, Ning is a woman of rigorous intellect and profound depth. A woman enthralled by the intricacy and rhythms of her work, but also haunted by memories of paths not taken and opportunities lost. A woman navigating the complicated power dynamics among her fellow Susans, whose greatest fears and desires lie just behind the gossip they exchange.
As the day's work grinds on, the friction between Ning's two identities – as anonymous manicurist and brilliant observer of her own circumstances – will gather electric and crackling force, and at last demand a reckoning with the way the world of privilege looks at a woman like Ning.
Told over a single day with razor-sharp precision and wit, Pick a Colour confirms Souvankham Thammavongsa's place as literature's premier chronicler of the immigrant experience, in its myriad, complex, and slyly subversive forms.
'Hauntingly good' ED PARK
‘Subverts the comforting mundane’ PITCHAYA SUDBANTHAD
‘A master over the sentence’ DAISY JOHNSON
Reader Reviews:
'Unlike anything I've read before, a talent to watch' (5-star review)
'The prose was liquid gold' (5-star review)
'I was devastated to finish it so soon' (5-star review)
Critics Review
This impressive novel shows how war, colonialism and migration play out in a small room where everyone’s name tag says Susan . . . There are developing moments of sympathy and even affection . . . and beautifully understated sadness . . . Highly crafted, layered and clever
Exceptional . . . A compact novel which prioritises atmosphere . . . The vibes are as immaculate as the manicures provided within . . . Outlines the ordinary in incandescent detail . . . A ferocity bubbles underneath the story’s sleek surface . . . In these subtle societal observations, the novel reads as quietly revolutionary, and its well-crafted characters and impeccable prose distinguish Thammavongsa as a particularly thrilling talent . . . A winner of numerous awards, this work suggests further high-profile accolades in her future . . . She is one to watch, and this debut is a certifiable knockout
Bitey . . . Lets us into the secret yet ubiquitous world of nail salons, skilfully opening up the experience of those who work there . . . Thammavongsa captures the role of beauty salons as modern confessionals . . . There’s darkness laced into the mundane comings and goings . . . Richly observational, this us-versus-them tale illuminates a rarely seen slice of life
A taut, tricksy novel . . . A feat of economy . . . Thammavongsa treats us to a buffet of minor characters … The author’s strategy is subtle but assured . . . Punches above its weight. Thammavongsa’s minimalism conveys a range of tones and psychological nuances as she grapples with the stubborn prejudices of class. She feints like a prize fighter, tipping in clues to her protagonist’s past . . . Pick a Colour expands beyond the frame of a character study, but on its own terms, beholden to no reader’s expectation . . . Wily and caustic, the book condemns petty Western narcissisms yet allows for bursts of radiance
The author of the short-story collection How to Pronounce Knife returns with a knockout first novel . . . Thammavongsa’s minimalism draws a cutting distinction between her savvy characters and the vapid customers who seek manicures, pedicures and facials, flipping scripts on race and class supremacy. The Susans speak truths in a tight, beautiful narrative, striking with a cobra’s coiled energy
The immigrant experience and the tension between who we really are and the parts we’re forced to play is deftly explored in this triumphant debut
It would be easy to judge this book by its incredible cover. But the insightful depictions of privilege and the service industry inside are even more vibrant . . . A cracklingly tense novel
The steady-paced, often mordantly funny Pick a Colour explores the immigrant experience, the long tail of trauma, the indignities suffered by low-wage workers and their companion emotions: loneliness, loss and grief
A smart exploration of class and power dynamics
A shrewd, carefully observed character study . . . The Susans act as a kind of catty Greek chorus . . . Poignant ruminations about love and loss
The definition of small but mighty literature . . . Through deft writing and humour, Thammavongsa creates a world rich with individuality and understanding for the lives that surround us but that we may not at first see
A slim, gimlet-eyed tale about one woman’s desires in an age of erasure
Pick a Colour is a wickedly funny and moving novel by a superbly stylish writer. This is a book about intimacy and alienation, how othering limits our gaze, about the masks we wear, the instincts we hone, and the ways in which we are nonetheless created anew in each encounter. In a world so often drained of ethics and meaning, Souvankham narrows in on the contemporary rituals of our modern day confessionals – and I couldn’t help but feel her narrator is a high priestess for this moment
Pick a Colour is one of the greatest novels I have ever read. In alchemical and captivating prose, this book orbits the steady flows of power and projection that exist between Ning, her employees and her clients. Love, death, joy, abandonment, deception and lust are all at stake in Susan’s Nail Salon. The world of Pick a Colour is shockingly intimate. Reading this book left me with an intense desire to touch a stranger’s hands
Only as masterful an ironist as Souvankham Thammavongsa could have pulled this off: a work of urgent and impassioned solidarity that is also a defiant, even pugnacious, assertion of narrative autonomy and technical control. Pick a Colour is a knockout: every punch lands
This debut novel is a must for fans (like me) of Thammavongsa's intimate, deliciously tricky short stories. With dry humour and a keen eye for class, she's given us a hauntingly good book about the dignity and despair of work: the secret life of nail salons
Tender and intimate yet tense from beginning to end with its blow-by-blow immediacy, Pick a Colour subverts the comforting mundane. Souvankham Thammavongsa’s characters speak to us through the cracks of power hierarchies to elucidate the ordinary potential for violence buzzing under a thin veneer of normal society
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