Acclaimed author Sally Rooney has announced her next novel, due to be published this autumn.
Intermezzo is Rooney's fourth novel, following Conversations With Friends, Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You, all international bestsellers.
Described by her publisher, Faber, as 'An exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family', the novel concerns a pair of brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek, who seem to have little in common.
The synopsis reads: 'Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties – successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father's death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women – his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined. For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude – a period of desire, despair and possibility – a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking'.
The opening lines from Intermezzo, the new novel from Sally Rooney. Coming September 2024. pic.twitter.com/GpGBZxWlXQ
— Faber Books (@FaberBooks) February 29, 2024
Faber Publisher Alex Bowler said: 'Intermezzo is a story of brothers and lovers, of familial and romantic intimacies, of relationships that don't quite fit the conventional structures.
'After three miraculous books, Sally Rooney's millions of readers will recognise the beauty and insight, the pain and hope that radiates from this new novel. But it marks an exquisite advance, too, in the work of a writer who seems so attuned to our lives, our hearts and our times.’
Rooney’s work has been translated into over forty languages, with Normal People and Conversations With Friends adapted as BBC television series.
In 2022, TIME magazine named her among the 100 most influential people in global culture.
She lives and works in County Mayo, where she was born.
Intermezzo is set for publication on September 24th 2024, with Rooney expected to appear at events in London and Dublin.
