Discipline (Hardback)

Larissa Pham

A taut, provocative debut novel about creativity and sex, coercion and control, with shades of Rachel Cusk and Katie Kitamura

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. But he surely forgot her long ago, and the temptation to exorcise her past was overwhelming.

Then, between hotel rooms and bookstores, formal dinners and road-trip hook-ups, she receives a series of sly, unsettling emails and finally an invitation to visit the professor's isolated house on an island off the coast of 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.

Taut and provocative, Discipline walks the lines between creativity and control, truth and memory, coercion and desire.

Publication date: 05/02/2026

£16.99

ISBN: 9781805226703

Imprint: Serpent's Tail

Subject: Biography & Memoir, Fiction

Discipline (Ebook)

Larissa Pham

Preorder from

A taut, provocative debut novel about creativity and sex, coercion and control, with shades of Rachel Cusk and Katie Kitamura

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. But he surely forgot her long ago, and the temptation to exorcise her past was overwhelming.

Then, between hotel rooms and bookstores, formal dinners and road-trip hook-ups, she receives a series of sly, unsettling emails and finally an invitation to visit the professor's isolated house on an island off the coast of 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.

Taut and provocative, Discipline walks the lines between creativity and control, truth and memory, coercion and desire.

Publication date: 05/02/2026

£13.99

ISBN: 9781805226727

Imprint: Serpent's Tail

Subject: Biography & Memoir, Fiction

Larissa Pham

Larissa Pham

Larissa Pham is an artist and writer in Brooklyn. She has written essays and criticism for The Paris Review Daily, The Nation, Art in America, the Poetry Foundation, and elsewhere. She was an inaugural Yi Dae Up Fellowship recipient from the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat.