Separate Rooms

In Separate Rooms, Pier Vittorio Tondelli delivers an elegiac, deeply introspective portrait of love, loss, and memory. Leo, a celebrated Italian writer, drifts through Europe following the death of his younger lover, Thomas, a German musician. Burdened by grief and distance, Leo traverses cities and seasons—each street corner, café, and breeze a mirror to the moments they shared, and the painful choice they once made to live apart to preserve love’s intensity.

Presented in three lyrical movements, the prose is at once poetic and intimate, unfolding through layers of nostalgia, regret, and the yearning for connection. Tondelli’s writing shines with subtle wit and worldliness, evoking a tone reminiscent of Éric Rohmer’s meditative films. The narrative doesn’t chase plot, it inhabits emotion.

A revival of a queer classic, newly translated from the Italian, the book finds its place alongside works like Call Me by Your Name and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, but stands powerfully on its own as a reflective meditation on imperfect, almost idealized love. Gentle readers will find here a masterpiece of restraint and an enduring testament to how memory both sustains and fractures the heart.