Books Sally Rooney Read While Writing Intermezzo
photo credit: Kalpesh Lathigra
*As told to Faber Books
When writing a novel, I’m always trying to find ways to get closer to my characters and their world.
These paths of approach are often non-literary—in the case of Intermezzo, I watched a lot of chess analysis online—but reading can be helpful too. What follows is a list of some of the books I read while I was writing or editing my own: each one of them helped me to think more deeply about my work and what I wanted it to be.
On the grieving of a family patriarch.
For the philosophy and psychological insights.
More storytelling of a son grieving the loss of his father.
One of Rooney’s favorite novels.
Rooney calls this a beautifully written non-fiction with “great moral clarity about Palestine”.
*Excerpt via Faber Books
