Sceptre wins five-way auction for queer Italian classic Separate Rooms

Sceptre has won a five-way auction for the queer Italian classic Separate Rooms, which will soon be adapted into a new film directed by Luca Guadagnino.
Executive publisher Federico Andornino acquired world English rights to Separate Rooms and Rimini, two novels by the late author Pier Vittorio Tondelli, from his Italian publisher Bompiani. International rights to Separate Rooms have now been sold in North America (Zando), France (Seuil), Germany (Gutkind), Czech Republic (Meridione) and Greece (Polis).

Separate Rooms, translated by Simon Pleasance, will be published in hardback, export trade paperback, e-book and audio digital download on 24th April 2025, while Rimini, translated by Elena Pala, will follow in 2026.

Actors Josh O’Connor and Léa Seydoux are in talks to star in the film adaptation of Separate Rooms. The Sceptre edition of the book features a new introduction by André Aciman, the author of Call Me By Your Name (Atlantic Books).

"Thomas, a young German musician, is dying," the synopsis says. "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."

It adds: "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."
Andornino said: "Pier Vittorio Tondelli is a cult icon of modern Italian literature and Separate Rooms is his masterpiece. A devastatingly moving account of queer love and loss, set across the Europe of the late 1980s and early 1990s, it’s a novel that begs to be rediscovered and then treasured forever."