Perfection

By: Vincenzo Latronico, Sophie Hughes -translator

Narrated by: Sophie Roberts

A 2025 International Booker Prize Shortlist Nominee

A scathing, provocative novel about contemporary existence by a rising star in Italian literature.

Anna and Tom, an expat couple, have fashioned a dream life for themselves in Berlin. They are young digital "creatives" exploring the excitements of the city, freelancers without too many constraints, who spend their free time cultivating house plants and their images online. At first, they reasonably deduce that they've turned their passion for aesthetics into a viable, even enviable career, but the years go by, and Anna and Tom grow bored. As their friends move back home or move on, so their own work and sex life—and the life of Berlin itself—begin to lose their luster. An attempt to put their politics into action fizzles in embarrassed self-doubt. Edging closer to forty, they try living as digital nomads only to discover that, wherever they go, "the brand of oat milk in their flat whites was the same."

Perfection is a scathing novel about contemporary existence, a tale of two people gradually waking up to find themselves in various traps, wondering how it all came to be. Was it a lack of foresight, or were they just born too late?

©2022 Vincenzo Latronico; Translation copyright 2025 by Sophie Hughes (P)2025 Tantor Media

As real as it gets

It’s just like it is in the pictures! A very enjoyable and thought-provoking read.

Writing style that dually describes the couples lifestyle and simultaneously specific experiences.

I liked seeing the full arc of their life choices which are both relatable but very different from mine. I didn’t like how the book seemed to focus on a lack of fulfillment in their lives. They surely would have found plenty of joy. It’s depressing…

Schadenfreude

The line the author walks between sympathy and condescension for his characters is faint; and this ambivalence is one of the more interesting effects one experiences when reading. In retrospect, however, it is clear there is no love lost between them. As a reader, it is odd to feel an impulse to defend, often, the characters from their author’s callousness; but when the characters turn out to simply be not very smart, to be, in fact, fools? They are ungrateful, self-absorbed, dissatisfied, uninformed, and blind, and in their search for more beauty, pleasure, and self-regard, they bungle, as when they experience the disappointments of several poorly researched and executed vacations and moves around Europe. Dumdums are easy targets. They are easy to write, and easy to ridicule. The choice of target says something unflattering about the author, and ultimately, makes this book rather low brow.

Outstanding short novel about the expat life in Europe

Excellent reading of an unusual short novel with no dialogue. Set mostly in 1999-2019 Berlin, observes the life of a typical expat couple with pitiless if not quite clinical gaze.

Unique take on soullessness

Good writing and detail about a certain age group. It was fun to travel with them. The author is good at his job, but what the author really accomplished is a sense of how individuals need sense of purpose coupled with spiritual wonder that is not found in instgram, magazines, or constant travel.