Sally Rooney’s much-anticipated fourth novel is on its way — and PEOPLE has an exclusive first look at the cover.
The acclaimed author of bestsellers like Normal People and Conversations with Friends will publish her latest novel, Intermezzo, through publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux this fall.
Intermezzo follows brothers Peter and Ivan, polar opposites who are brought together in the aftermath of their father’s death. Peter, a successful Dublin lawyer in his 30s, finds himself self-medicating and struggling to manage his various romantic entanglements. Ivan, a socially awkward 22-year-old competitive chess player, becomes infatuated with an older woman whose life quickly becomes intertwined with his own.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Both Peter and Ivan are embroiled in a period in their lives rife with “desire, despair and possibility,” as the siblings learn just how much they can handle, per the novel’s description.
“Through the components of everyday life, Sally Rooney builds a world of ethical complexity that matches that of the great 19th-century novels,” said Farrar, Straus and Giroux President and Publisher Mitzi Angel of the novel in a statement. “Intermezzo is an astonishing novel: it marks yet another advance in the work of a writer who captures our life and our times with more stylistic elan and generosity of spirit than ever.”
Rooney, often dubbed the “Salinger for the Snapchat generation,” catapulted to literary fame with her bestselling novels Conversations with Friends (2017), Normal People (2018), which was nominated for the Booker Prize, and Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021).
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The author’s books, set in her native Ireland, explore themes such as social class, power dynamics and other aspects of adulthood.
A Hulu series based on Normal People, and starring Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones, premiered in 2020. Conversations with Friends was also adapted into a Hulu series, starring Joe Alwyn, Jemima Kirke, Sasha Lane and Alison Oliver in 2022.
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Intermezzo hits bookstores on Sept. 24 and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.
