If you’re a Normal People fan, chances are you’re well aware that a new Sally Rooney novel is on the way, set to hit bookshelves on September 7 this year. In more good news, the cover for the upcoming book — titled Beautiful World, Where Are You — has now been unveiled by Faber.
Designed by Jon Gray, with illustrations by Manshen Lo, the cover maintains the aesthetic appeal of Normal People and Conversations With Friends before it — which is a relief, since it’s bound to be filling our Instagram feeds for the latter half of the year.
The novel itself is billed as “a book of friendship and sex, art and faith, power and love”. More specifically, it revolves around two best friends in their late 20s, Alice and Eileen, who find themselves living very different lives. While novelist Alice is jetting off to Rome with a man she’s met, named Felix, Eileen is going through a break-up in Dublin, and flirting with a childhood friend, Simon. Due to the distance, much of Alice and Eileen’s friendship plays out over email.
“Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young," reads a description from Faber. "But life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?”
“This book is a brilliant exploration of the intertwined lives of four characters,” Jon Gray adds, speaking to Entertainment Weekly about the newly-revealed design. “I wanted it to feel like you were catching glimpses of them through clouds like melted holes in the cover revealing the characters inside.”
“Manshen Lo’s work has exactly the right tone. It’s cool and distant, but also has enough personality and detail in it to make it feel somehow very human and domestic.”
Beautiful World, Where Are You follows the release of Normal People in 2018, and Conversations With Friends the year before. Rooney has also written a wildly successful TV adaptation of the former — starring Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones — with an adaptation of Conversations With Friends on the way, starring Dazed cover star and The Miseducation of Cameron Post actor Sasha Lane, Girls’ Jemima Kirke, and more.
Take a look at the cover for Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You below.