Separate Rooms

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Publish date: 21 May 2026
Pages: 256
Language: English

Subjects: Family & Relationships, Alternative Family, Death, Grief, Bereavement, Love & Romance, Fiction, Classics, LGBTQ+, Gay, Literary, Romance, Historical, 20th Century, International, Adaptations, City Life, World Literature, Europe (General), Italy, Places, Europe, Health & Fitness, Diseases & Conditions, AIDS & HIV

The rediscovered gay classic, published in English for the first time in thirty years
'Is this overlooked Italian novel the new Call Me by Your Name? A classic of Italian gay fiction . . . the whole thing is bathed in elegiac pathos'
THE SUNDAY TIMES

'An Italian novel of imperfect love and urgent grief'
NEW YORK TIMES

'Beautiful and poignant'
THE TIMES

'A stunning novel . . . prepare to be deeply moved'
JACK PARLETT, author of Fire Island

'A discreet, lyrical meditation on the nature of male love'
EDMUND WHITE

With an introduction by André Aciman, bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name

Thomas, a young German musician, is dying. His older boyfriend, a renowned Italian writer named Leo, finds it impossible to watch the slow and inevitable demise of his lover; he condemns himself to moving cities every few weeks instead, in the hope of finding a semblance of peace.

He travels through Europe where past and present overlap, years merge and faces emerge - and where reminders of the life he and Thomas shared are on every corner. Leo's memories become clearer with every road he takes, much as he wishes he could simply forget. Wanting to preserve the passion of their relationship, Leo had forced Thomas to live separately: in separate rooms, separate towns, with separate lives. But now, face to face with true solitude, Leo must finally reckon with the impossible striving of memory to recreate life and, ultimately, cross an ocean to find the strength to go on.

André Aciman's Call Me by Your Name meets Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: Separate Rooms is a singular and unforgettable meditation on almost-ideal love, told in three musical movements, by a fiery and unforgettable literary talent.