Oddělené pokoje

Writer Leo is facing his thirtieth birthday and the loss of his partner, trying to come to terms with his own difference, which is definitely not just about sexual orientation, but refers to a feeling he has had since childhood, and he travels a lot: his constant moves within Europe and between continents are a form of escape, but also a defiance of time, the passing of which he is beginning to realize, along with his own mortality. He mourns not only Thomas, but also his childhood and youth, to which he bids a final farewell. Leo is as sensitive an observer of his surroundings as he is a tireless explorer of his own inner self. Alternating reportage snippets from Italy, Germany, Great Britain, France, Spain, Greece, the United States, and Canada, he composes a mosaic that is also a compelling chronicle of the second half of the 1980s for today's reader, in which the silence of solitude, whether voluntary or forced, emerges from the background of the noisy crowd, and the metaphor of impossible love as life in separate rooms.

Piero Vittorio Tondelli's last and greatest work is a love story, a bildungsroman, a travelogue, a social commentary, and, last but not least, a requiem for youth. and although more than thirty-five years have passed since its first publication, it remains relevant in its sincere effort to find a balance between the fear of losing freedom and the need to love and share, between writing as confession and as exhibition, between the desire for piety and the lure of sin, between the instinct for death and the instinct for life.