Sally Rooney unveils cover of new novel Intermezzo and plot that explores ‘ethical complexity’

The cover for Sally Rooney’s upcoming novel Intermezzo has been released by her publisher Faber Books and fans are already celebrating on social media.

Intermezzo will be the fourth novel published by the international best-selling author of Normal People and Conversations With Friends and will be released on 24 September this year.

Breaking the format of its predecessors, the new book will follow two brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek, and their very different ways of dealing with the death of their father.

Faber unveiled the Intermezzo cover, which shows a small man standing between a larger man’s legs next to a fallen chess piece, on X/Twitter.

The cobalt blue illustration was designed British Indian illustrator Kishan Rajani who specialises in book design and has previously worked on covers for novels by Ben Okri and Jen Beagin.

“Through the components of everyday life, Sally Rooney builds a world of ethical complexity that matches that of the great 19th-century novels,” Farrar, Straus and Giroux President told People in a statement.

“Intermezzo is an astonishing novel: it marks yet another advance in the work of a writer who captures our life and our times with more stylistic elan and generosity of spirit than ever.”

Fans were ecstatic about the release of Rooney’s Intermezzo cover. “Omg lives were changed,” one person wrote. “So dreamy,” added another. “I love it so much!!!!”

Peter, one of the protagonists in Rooney’s latest novel, is a lawyer in his thirties who is successful, confident and apparently unassailable.

However, he struggles with grief and self-medicates while struggling to manage relationships with two very different women.

His relationship with his first love Sylvia is enduring, but Naomi, a college student, feels life is one long joke.

Ivan is Peter’s 22-year-old brother and a competitive chess player. He sees himself as socially awkward, a loner and the opposite of his elder brother.

He meets an older woman called Margaret who is emerging from a turbulent past and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

Publisher Faber adds: “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.”