Sally Rooney’s New Novel, Intermezzo, Is Coming This September
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8 months ago
Plus, five more books to look forward to this year
The book world is abuzz with the news that Sally Rooney’s new novel, Intermezzo, will be published in September 2024. Here’s everything you need to know about this highly-anticipated release – plus more books to read in 2024.
New Books To Read In 2024
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
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Normal People author Sally Rooney has caused quite the stir after announcing that her fourth novel, Intermezzo, will be published on 24 September. The book will focus on the complex relationship between two brothers as they navigate their father’s recent death.
The official synopsis reads: ‘Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. 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.’
While it centres on Rooney’s trademark theme of complex relationships between young people, Intermezzo will see the Irish author shift her focus from romantic to familial connections, exploring loss and identity in a new way. We certainly can’t wait to get our hands on this tome.
PUBLICATION DATE: 24 September. faber.co.uk
The House Of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul
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Drag Race star RuPaul’s most personal project to date, The House Of Hidden Meanings is a deeply intimate memoir detailing his childhood, his career and his journey to self-acceptance. Expect signature wit and wisdom combined with striking tenderness.
PUBLICATION DATE: 5 March. harpercollins.co.uk
Until August by Gabriel García Márquez
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A particularly exciting book release this year is the posthumous publication of Until August, the great lost novel from Gabriel García Márquez, one of the most beloved Latin American writers in history. Arriving ten years after Marquez’s death, the book tells the story of Ana Magdalena Bach, a married woman who takes on a new lover for one night every year. ‘She is happily married and has no reason to escape the world she has made with her husband and child,’ the synopsis states. ‘And yet, every August, she travels here to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover.’ Tackling themes of sensuality, freedom and regret, it promises to be a truly moving tale from the world-renowned Márquez.
PUBLICATION DATE: 12 March. penguin.co.uk
Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler
Known for her landmark books Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter, philosopher and gender studies scholar Judith Butler is back with Who’s Afraid of Gender?, an exploration into the dangers of anti-gender ideology, trans-exclusionary thinking and homophobic rhetoric. Billed as ‘an enlightening, essential account of how a fear of gender is fuelling reactionary politics around the world’, it’s sure to be pertinent, thought-provoking read.
PUBLICATION DATE: 19 March. penguin.co.uk
Knife by Salman Rushdie
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Knife sees Salman Rushdie reflect the brutal murder attempt that he survived during a lecture in 2022. Offering a remarkably personal account of this near-death experience – more than three decades on from the fatwa that ordered his assassination – the book is a meditation on trauma, healing and the power of art.
PUBLICATION DATE: 16 April. penguin.co.uk
The Life Impossible by Matt Haig
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From the international bestselling author of The Midnight Library comes The Life Impossible, a wonderfully inspiring adventure novel set on a Mediterranean island. The synopsis reads: ‘When retired maths teacher Grace is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.
‘Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the Balearics, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.’ Detailing hope, transformation and great adventure, it’s a book we can’t wait to read in 2024.
PUBLICATION DATE: 29 August. waterstones.com
