DISCIPLINE has been out for one month! This isn’t everything that’s happened between now and then but it’s a lot of things. Very very grateful to everyone who has helped this little book make its way into the world post-pub day, especially the booksellers who have handsold & written shelf talkers & staffed events & generally kept the love of books alive in these hard times!
I got to go on tour and it was every bit as surreal as I’d hoped. I have no idea how Christine managed this. Many thanks to my brilliant interlocutors: @veryhotmommm , @jenniferchosalaff , Viv at @thelynxbooks , @kimberlykingparsons , and @gojeanfraziergo 💝 I am planning a few more stops this spring, stay tuned!
If you have emailed me about this book I love you. If you have reviewed this book thank you so much, criticism is beautiful and important. I have a fantastic publicist and her name is Georgia Brainard. I’m going to eat some KBBQ now everyone be good!
Larissa Pham’s debut novel #Discipline is out today!
When two people fall apart, who gets to tell their story?
Christine is a young writer touring her debut novel - a thinly disguised tale of the affair she had with her professor ten years earlier. After a series of sly, unsettling emails she receives an invitation to visit the professor’s isolated house in Maine. Against her better judgement, Christine is drawn back into his orbit, risking forever losing control of the narrative she’s worked so hard to create.
💚 ‘In Larissa Pham’s astute, intelligent debut novel, Discipline, everything is at stake — the art, the life, the love, the sense of self’
💚 ‘Pham’s writing completely held me. Each page left me wanting more, slowly building a quiet but persistent tension that gathers towards an ending that felt unexpectedly cathartic’
💚 ‘This was the best book I read in 2025, I simply could not put it down’
*Reader reviews
#Discipline, Larissa Pham’s taut and provocative debut novel, is out next week!
When two people fall apart, who gets to tell their story?
Christine is a young writer touring her debut novel - a thinly disguised tale of the affair she had with her professor ten years earlier. He was magnetic, domineering, both the sponsor of her early promise and its destroyer.
Then, between hotel rooms and bookstores, she receives an invitation to the professor’s isolated house in Maine. Against her better judgement, Christine is drawn back into his orbit, risking forever losing control of the narrative she’s worked so hard to create.
Discipline walks the lines between creativity and control, truth and memory, coercion and desire. Out Thursday 5th February.
“I have the sense that something is being drawn between us. Not drawn as in line but as in arrow pulled back. I don’t know which of us holds the bow, and which of us faces the arrow.”
Christine is on tour for her new novel, a revenge fantasy based on a real relationship gone bad with an older professor. But when that same professor reaches out after years of silence, in a series of sly communiques revealing he has read her book, Christine must now reckon with what it means to lose the reins of a narrative she wrote precisely to maintain control.
Larissa Pham's nerve-tingling debut novel, DISCIPLINE, is a delicately explosive high-wire act about the fictions we construct for ourselves in order to survive. Get your copy today!
A snippet of DISCIPLINE is also available in the Hamish Hamilton Pocket Digest, free to read at the link in our bio!
Happy publication day to DISCIPLINE by @lrsphm —a taut, electrifying debut about art, power, intimacy, and the stories we tell to survive.
“An exhilarating, exquisite book, full of an eerie intelligence and startling compassion… a pitch-perfect novel.” —Ayșegül Savaș A BEST BOOK OF THE SEASON: @bustle , @debutiful , @harpersbazaarus
Christine is on tour for her novel, a revenge fantasy based on a real-life relationship gone bad with an older professor ten years prior.
But when the antagonist of her novel, her old painting professor, reaches out in a series of sly communiques after years of silence to tell her that he’s read her book, Christine must reckon with what it means to lose the reins of a narrative she wrote precisely to maintain control.
📚 Grab your copy of DISCIPLINE at the link in our bio.
My debut novel DISCIPLINE is out today 🩶 I’m so excited for you to meet Christine and everyone else she encounters on her tour… ✨
So grateful for the many hands that brought this book into the world—my agent, @we_were_here , my editor @mkrispy , the whole team at @randomhousebooks including my fab publicist Georgia Brainard; my UK editor Rowan Cope at @serpentstail@profile.books , my Canadian editor @davidjohnross ; @sylviethecamera who so kindly traveled to shoot my author photo, and many other wonderful people who make books happen!
Grateful to get to write and grateful to be read. I am so happy and excited I could scream and will once I finish posting this. Thank you for celebrating DISCIPLINE with me today❣️
Photos featuring some very cool things that have happened on the way to publication, and a pic of me the last time I was in Maine 🌬️
✨COVER REVEAL✨
We’re excited to reveal the cover for @lrsphm ’s debut novel DISCIPLINE, designed by @rake.makes ! Get a behind-the-scenes look at @debutiful ’s website!
DISCIPLINE hits bookstores on January 20, 2026 and is available for pre-order now.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Christine is on tour for her novel, a revenge fantasy based on a real-life relationship gone bad with an older professor ten years prior. Now on the road, she’s seeking answers—about how to live a good life and what it means to make art—through intimate conversations with strangers, past lovers, and friends.
But when the antagonist of her novel—her old painting professor—reaches out in a series of sly communiques after years of silence to tell her that he’s read her book, Christine must reckon with what it means to lose the reins of a narrative she wrote precisely to maintain control.
✨✨✨
#debut #novel #cover #bookcover #coverdesign #debutiful
Near the end of my MFA at @benningtonwritingseminars , I began writing, quietly and with great pleasure, what I thought of as a secret novel. It began with a voice, a narrator, a woman—Christine—who was on the run, and as I kept writing I wanted to learn what she was running from, and what would happen when it finally caught up with her.
And in this process I asked a lot of questions—about how we ought to live our lives, and what it means to make art, and what happens when we change and when others change us. Now my secret novel is no longer a secret, and I can’t wait for it to be in the world and for you to meet Christine and everyone she speaks to.
An ocean of gratitude to my marvelous agent @we_were_here , who met this book (and me!) so wholeheartedly and with such precision and elegance, and to my editor @mkrispy , whose enthusiasm, heart, and wisdom makes me feel as though I’ve ended up in the perfect place at @atrandombooks !
Photo dump to commemorate the desks I wrote and revised this book at, a few of the landscapes and artists who inspired it, and a photo of what I really look like when I’m drafting… 💘
