Leo is an Italian writer in his thirties. Thomas, his German lover, is dead. On a plane to Munich, Thomas s home town, Leo slips into a reverie of their meeting and life in Paris, nights in Thomas s flat in Montmartre and a desperate, drug-induced flight through the forests of northern France that spells the end for Leo and Thomas languid, erotic life together. Leo travels to find anonymity. Structured in three musical movements, Separate Rooms is a story of ideal love, broken by absence and separation. When Thomas was alive, he and Leo had separate rooms in order to preserve the urgency of their passion. Now, Leo faces solitude, the impossible striving of memory to recreate life and the hostility of a prejudiced world. Separate Rooms, Tondelli s last book, is a powerful novel of the strength of love and the trauma of death.