Pier Vittorio Tondelli’s Queer Classic 'Separate Rooms' Gets Reissue and Film Adaptation

Key facts

• Pier Vittorio Tondelli’s novel 'Separate Rooms' is being reissued in English by Sceptre.
• Luca Guadagnino is directing a film adaptation of 'Separate Rooms'.
• The novel was first published in Italian in 1989, two years before Tondelli died of AIDS in 1991.
• The protagonist Leo grieves his partner Thomas, presumed dead from AIDS.
• André Aciman wrote a foreword for the new reprint.
• An event at the Italian Cultural Institute in London on June 11 celebrated the novel, organized by Olga Campofreda.
• Claudia Durastanti spoke at the event, calling the novel a 'cult queer classic'.
• Eugenio Bolongaro, McGill University associate professor, said the novel represents gay life in Italy and remains pertinent with the rise of the right.
• Italy has not legalized same-sex marriage; civil unions have been recognized since 2016.
• Tondelli never came out as gay; his family initially kept his cause of death private.
• The novel ends with Leo forming a chosen family and reinterpreting 'separate rooms' as a need for autonomy.
• Tondelli's novel 'Rimini' will be reprinted in English on July 30.