Book cover art inspired by the book, Separate Rooms, a novel by Pier Vittorio Tondelli. This visual interpretation and creative exploration was based on various themes, cultural topics and historical references mentioned in the book.
Official Book Information: Penguin Random House
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Mockup of audiobook art.
Themes and references in book include: death & mourning, Love/Sex, Queer Lifestyle, LGBTQIA+ Community, resting/lounging, bedrooms, meditation, religion, hotel rooms, The AIDS crisis, The "Lavendar Scare," world travel, among many others.
Notable Praise/Reviews for book:
“A story of love and youth and pain that will have you clutching at your heart. I want everyone to read it; I want to press it into people’s hands. Surely one of the best novels I’ve ever read.” —Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less and Less Is Lost
Official Synopsis:
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. So, he condemns himself to wandering the earth instead, moving cities every few weeks in the hope of finding the dividing line between the living and the dead.
He travels through Europe where past and present overlap, years merge and faces emerge, and reminders of the life he and Thomas shared are on every corner. From their meeting and nights spent in Paris to the drug-induced flight through the forests of northern France that spelled the end, Leo’s memories become clearer with every road he takes—much as he wishes he could simply forget. While alive, and 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 in Pier Vittorio Tondelli’s Separate Rooms: a singular and unforgettable meditation on almost-ideal love, told in three musical movements, by a treasured literary talent never before published in the US.
He travels through Europe where past and present overlap, years merge and faces emerge, and reminders of the life he and Thomas shared are on every corner. From their meeting and nights spent in Paris to the drug-induced flight through the forests of northern France that spelled the end, Leo’s memories become clearer with every road he takes—much as he wishes he could simply forget. While alive, and 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 in Pier Vittorio Tondelli’s Separate Rooms: a singular and unforgettable meditation on almost-ideal love, told in three musical movements, by a treasured literary talent never before published in the US.
This book by Pier Vittorio Tondelli was originally a 1989 release in Italy under the title "Camere Separate."
Italian counterpart to this interpretation of Pier Vittorio Tondelli's novel
Photo Credits: Terry Richardson
Model/Talent: Sean O'Pry