A new Sally Rooney novel is coming in September

Earlier this morning, U.K. publisher Faber & Faber announced some very exciting news on Twitter: a new novel by the critically acclaimed Irish author Sally Rooney is on its way.

Titled Beautiful World, Where Are You, this will be Rooney’s third novel, after her debut Conversations With Friends and its beloved, Booker Prize-longlisted follow-up Normal People. This new novel is, in true Rooney style, set to explore the political, social and economic challenges of the modern world and its future as it plays out in the lives of four characters.

Check out the blurb:

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.

Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young – but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

Speaking to the New York Times, Rooney’s U.S. publisher Mitzi Angel said ‘The title itself speaks to some of the book’s themes, it’s an unanswered question. The characters are contemplating a world in which the future is very uncertain for them — what’s the world of work going to look like, what’s going to happen to the planet, what are the politics we are all living through. I think the stakes are higher.’

(Honestly, it sounds like Rooney was having some feelings during lockdown.)

For all my fellow Sally Rooney lovers down here in Australia, publication date in the U.K. is set for the 7th of September, which means we should be getting it here around the same time, pandemic permitting. Beautiful World, Where Are You is available for pre-order now.

Beautiful World, Where Are You

by Sally Rooney

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a distribution warehouse, and asks him if he'd like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.

Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young-but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?...

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Olivia Fricot

Olivia Fricot (she/her) is Booktopia's Senior Content Producer and editor of the Booktopian blog. She has too many plants and not enough bookshelves, and you can usually find her reading, baking, or talking to said plants. She is pro-Oxford comma.

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