“Their friendships were surprisingly easy, but there was also something precarious and brittle about them. Anna and Tom had been welcomed with an almost suspicious level of interest and openness, proof of a loneliness everyone was trying to exorcise.”⁣
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“The city was so charming, so rich with history that their explorations of it felt samey and touristy, which wasn’t how they liked to see themselves.” ⁣
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From: 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 by Vincenzo Latronico, tr. by Sophie Hughes⁣
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International @thebookerprizes longlist #3⁣
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I read this short novel just ahead of the longlist and actually posted “this better be longlisted” the evening before the announcement. So you already know I loved it, but I find it hard to explain exactly why. ⁣
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Was it the eerily familiar interior design choices and living room arrangements? Was it the disturbingly relatable cycle of anticipation and disappointment that we all experience through social media? Or maybe the painfully recognizable (illusion of) control and perfection that we all strive for whether in our personal lives or here on Bookstagram? Or maybe the scathing little insights about expat communities and the (fragility of the) friendships that get formed there that rang a little too familiar from my times abroad?⁣
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It must have been the combination of all of this, because how else can I explain that a book without dialogue, written in a detached, slightly satirical tone was so impactful? ⁣
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I loved it from beginning to end and I do hope it gets shortlisted.

I absolutely adored this novel. Tight and focused, I found its portrayal of millenial ennui to be both a serious critique, but also that it was in on the joke, and it was darkly chuckling to itself in the corner. This book has a strong central thesis, of how modern life leads us to the idea that we are chasing a certain way of living but rarely question our own fulfilment within it all, and I found Ana and Tom's journey through this, coupled with the almost detached and ironic tone, truly captivating.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

What happens when the quest for perfection becomes imprisoning? If you’re constantly trying to make your life match an impossibly perfect image, how can you hope to find happiness? These are the kinds of questions that were prompted for me by Vincenzo Latronico’s novel Perfection, published in beautifully plain, blurb-free format by Fitzcarraldo Editions and recently longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.
Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

Latronico wrote Perfection as a tribute to Things: A Story of the Sixties by Georges Perec, and it closely mirrors the structure and approach of Perec’s 1965 novella: both stories begin with a long, extremely detailed description of the apartment, and both feature a youngish couple with generic names experiencing a similar plot arc. Perfection is a way of transposing Perec’s novel onto the early years of the 21st century.

The differences between the two books highlight the different values of the two eras, at least as Patronico sees them. Whereas the sixties couple in Perec’s novel defined themselves by “things”, i.e. consumer culture, Latronico’s millennial characters are obsessed with perfection. Perec’s try to achieve happiness by accumulating material things; Latronico’s are constantly trying to make reality match the perfection of the images that surround them.

It’s significant too, I think, that whereas Perec’s novel featured a French couple living in Paris, Latronico’s characters are expats from an unnamed place in southern Europe, living in Berlin. They are in the place but never really of it. As the years go by, they accumulate knowledge that gives them status in the eyes of newer arrivals, but they never seem to connect with local people (or even to want to do that). They are adrift, and as the novel reaches its climax they begin searching for new places to give them the perfect life they want, and I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that this approach is about as likely to be successful as the 1960s strategy of buying a bunch of shiny consumer goods.

From the very first chapter of the novel, Tom and Anna are fighting a losing battle to make the images match the reality. The detailed description of their apartment is actually a description of a series of images that they post online, but the clean minimalism soon dissolves in the reality of dust, smudged windows, food stains on the counter, and the annoying presence of phone chargers, bicycle pumps, herpes cream, tissues, earphones and a thousand other things that they have to clear away when they want to make life match the photos.

Not much happens in the novel. There are no huge dramas, no moral dilemmas, no cliffhangers. We just observe the years go by for Tom and Anna through the cool, detached gaze of Vincenzo Latronico, their lives mirroring many of the cultural trends and technological developments of the first two decades of the new millennium. We see them trying to adapt, trying to cope, trying to be happy as the city and the world change around them.

Tom and Anna are not memorable characters, and I don’t think they’re meant to be. They don’t do the things that characters in novels normally do, like talk to each other, argue, or even take much independent action. They just move through the years in their sterile Berlin apartment as a single unit, with the entire novel being narrated in the third person plural. As far as I can remember, there’s not a single line of dialogue in the novel—the closest we get to that are the indirect reports of what “they” talk about with their expat friends.

A novel about a generic couple not doing much does not sound compelling, I know. Perfection gets a fairly poor average score of 3.39 on Goodreads, with many of the reviews complaining that the characters are forgettable, the events dull, that it doesn’t give a true sense of Berlin. I understand those reactions, but the novel worked for me. The lives of Tom and Anna are intended to be empty and hollow, Berlin is deliberately drawn in the caricaturish way they see it as expats, and although Perfection doesn’t provide drama or suspense, what it does offer is very much worth reading.

What it offers is a way to think about the age we’re living through. I’ve sketched the outlines here, but the novel itself offers much more detail on everything from the constantly changing trends to the sudden food obsessions that somehow seem to be the same as everyone else’s.

More importantly, what’s it like to grow up with “the notion that individuality manifested itself as a set of visual differences, immediately decodable and in constant need of updating”? Sure, we’ve always lived like that to some extent—the consumerist accumulation of Perec’s sixties couple was a way of creating visual differences and hoping to assemble an identity out of them. But never before have people been so surrounded by images that change so often, identities that are so constantly morphing and becoming outdated and needing to be shaped to conform to the new.

Latronico is good at melding details together to show the welter of images and videos and news and sensations in which Anna and Tom are immersed. Here’s a short extract from one of many such scenes:

“An egg became more famous than the Pope. A highly contagious virus raged through West Africa. A fashion brand exploited East Asian sweatshop workers. A young woman recorded all the times she was catcalled. Two African Americans were killed by the police. A man went around filming first kisses. A plane vanished en route to Beijing. A woman was beautiful. An apartment full of plants was beautiful. A vegan quiche was beautiful. A child needed money for chemo. Time disappeared. The city ebbed and flowed like a tide.”

And here he is later, describing the experience of being online in the early 21st century:

“It was like walking through the world’s most hectic street market on cocaine. It was like channel hopping an entire wall of TV sets. It was like telepathically tuning into the thoughts of a stadium packed with people. But really it wasn’t like anything else, because it was new.”

Perec was of course famous for the OuLiPo movement of writing novels within constraints, and by setting himself the constraint of mirroring Perec’s novel, Latronico has achieved a unique and very interesting piece of literary fiction. Perfection is not satisfying in the way that novels are traditionally satisfying—if you want to feel an emotional investment in the lives of Anna and Tom and to be gripped by their story, you’ll be disappointed. But if you want a sharp take on the emptiness of contemporary life, it delivers in spades.

“Perfection” – Vincenzo Latronico (translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes)

“’It is all completely perfect’, the story will say. ‘It’s just like it is in the pictures’.”

My thanks to @netgalley and @fitzcarraldoeditions for my copy of this book in exchange for a review.

My second #internationalbookerprize book for 2025, “Perfection” follows the lives of Tom and Anna, two Italians who have moved to Berlin as digital nomads, graphic designers with skills that require no fixed abode. They seem to live an idyllic millennial lifestyle, clubbing in Berlin’s hippest clubs at the weekend with a collection of acquaintances that includes very few Germans, and living in a flat that they purchased before the rampant property boom. They care about the right causes, buy all the right house plants, and take all the right holidays, and yet they lack fulfillment. Berlin is both too much and not enough, and they hope that living somewhere new will bring them a sense of peace they lack, if only unconsciously.

I’m not sure how I feel about this book, and I’m hoping the text above conveys a sense of sarcasm that I think this book shares. Elements of this book definitely reflected myself in the 20s, or better or worse, and living near a city like Barcelona has definitely exposed me to people like Anna and Tom. As such, as a snapshot of a way of life in a particular generation, it felt like an accurate portrayal.

Whether you will enjoy that style, however, is another matter. By its very nature the book is supremely vacuous, leaving us little impression of the main protagonists save for their favourite brands and their work (which is probably the point). It was a fast and easy read, and it jabbed me at points with its observations, but this is not as deep or critical as some may want or expect. I’m fine with it being on the #longlist, but I don’t expect it to go much further.

A post-millennial coming-of-age uniting surface and substance
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In Berlin, Anna and Tom’s lives revolve around their remote work. Ex-pats surrounded by other ex-pats, their lives bleed from online to the real world and vice versa as Berlin becomes an epicentre of digitally remote working and living, fuelled by the growth of the internet as arbiter of taste, transmitter of culture and digital commons. But is the perfect meme, the perfect post, the perfect drug-fuelled high, exactly as they’re advertised to be?

With an anthropologist’s eye, Latronico shows us the immaculately curated feed of his millennial couple—always referred to as a pair—while at the same time peeling back the mask of what they chose to tell the world to reveal the unacknowledged despair and anxiety beneath. Although the phrase ‘digital nomad’ is anathema to the main characters, it is precisely what they are, both pro and con: free to go anywhere, freed from responsibility, but also unbearably rootless, lives always ephemeral. In this short but dense book, Latronico offers a hopeful but chilling warning of getting what you wish for.

Perfection is a book which exposes the duality of modern life and how easy it is to build the idea of a perfect exterior when you feel unfulfilled in reality. It follows a pretty standard relationship between Anna and Tom who are graphic designers living in Berlin. They partake in the techno culture of the city with their friends and love having creative workspaces. They do all they can to help with the refugee crises across the globe and donate to charities which support them.

On the outside they have an exciting and picture perfect relationship, but something about it just seems so dull. And that is wherein the main problem of the book lies, than in exposing the tediousness of everyday life, it almost becomes tedious itself.

Cracks in the facade are apparent - they have a really average sex life, they can’t seem to figure out where they want to live and always seem to wait to move somewhere else and better, until that becomes mundane too. Both the characters and the book never reach their true potential, exposing the fakeness of both online and literary lives which shine in comparison to the slowness of what we know is reality.

Latronico achieves his goal with this book, but with his goal being what it is, the book suffers for it. I do think it is the perfect length, and the writing was very beautiful and hooks you easily (despite the beginning which I found slightly clumsy). But I don’t think this is a book which will wow you or stick with you, it more provokes a lot of thought which can inspire some but also disappoint others.

Perfection follows ‘millennial expat couple Anna and Tom,’ who are ‘living the dream in Berlin, in a bright, affordable, plant-filled apartment.’ They are freelancers, graphic designers, partiers, home chefs, gallery-goers. Owners to a living space so beautiful that they barely feel guilt when renting it out sky-high rates to fund their European travel.

They are intermittent activists and instagram archivists. They are the epitome of the cosmopolitan ‘avocado millennial,’ living a life as ephemeral as it is beautiful to look at. Perhaps they are the picture of success. Berlin is the centre of their universe. Their home is fleshed out with precise detail and attentiveness. Perhaps, in time, it will bring them the happiness they are lacking.

Posting a picture of this cover feels kind of ironic. Manufacturing a ‘perfect’ picture of this book feels like an unwitting move against the project of Latronico’s text itself - a novel that takes down contemporary imagism and internet posturing with an acerbic wit. In 2025, with the lingering menace of the AI boom, there’s a sense of how easy it would be for Anna & Tom’s idyllic lifestyle to be instantly severed from its orbit. The question of labour is interrogated with a quiet but potent awareness of class consciousness.

Perfection pulls no punches, aiming down as well as up with playful contempt. It takes on gentrification, performative activism, the gig economy, hustle culture, virtue signalling, the housing crisis. It suggests that even the most privileged of lives (belonging to those who have the luxury to described as ‘expats’ rather than ‘immigrants’) are shot through with precarity. Perhaps this is the hairline fracture at the heart of ‘perfection.’

This book is searing. Wonderfully sardonic. Wears its intelligence lightly. A very worthy contender within the international booker longlist.

'In a way, they had become radicalized... They inhabited a world where everyone accepted a line of coke but no one was a doctor or a baker or a taxi driver or a middle school teacher. They spent all their time in plant-filled apartments and cafés with excellent wifi. In the long run it was inevitable they would convince themselves that nothing else existed'

** Now longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025 **

How you react to this short novel may well depend on your age and how your own lifestyle is mirrored in the pages! Tom and Anna have moved to Berlin from an unnamed European country, and in this short but devastating novel Vincenzo Latronico holds a mirror to modern ex-pat life, the trappings of success covering a shallowness of meaning and direction. A generational tale of angst, even now it seems set in a distant past - how would Tom and Anna survive now in 2025, let alone their issues in the 2010s? As they seek fulfilment they head wider, taking trips abroad, having a stint in Lisbon working as online creatives, joining friends in Sicily... This is the modern life for so many people in their 20s and early 30s, and in exacting prose and with a concise study Latronico lays that life open.

There is no dialogue, we simply see 'Tom and Anna' as a documentary, almost. The writing is precise, the tense changes so subtly that a reader may not notice (from present tense to imperfect to future). The translation by Sophie Hughes wonderfully captures every nuance of the original.

A book for our time, a very human story of the dangers of a life lived at one remove from whatever reality may be. It is unsettling, possibly all the more so because Latronico doesn't offer any solutions, rather the narrative voice remains observational, itself removed from the lives we are witnessing. Thoroughly deserving of its International Booker longlisting, this is a remarkable work.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

That was such an interesting book, which charts the gentrification of Berlin through the experiences of two young “creatives”. The author has an astute, wry eye for the details and tech trends of the past couple of decades, and the general flattening of culture that has accompanied globalisation. This is not a book about character. Anna and Tom are like SIMS characters moving through this changing world and environment, where their choices are moulded and determined by the world around them and their time in history. It’s written in the present and the reader observes their lives within this historical context of Berlin and the huge changes it has experienced. I think this is a wonderful and fascinating book but I am reminded that we all have this feeling that the past was better, and that we have just missed the good times. When we look back several decades later we can see what an amazing time it was to be there, exactly when we were! There is no perfection except in nostalgia.

Short but sharply observed, this is an interesting exploration of the pitfalls of comparison as told through the story of Anna and Tom, living in Berlin. I enjoyed the overall themes, but found the characters extremely hard to root for.

Many thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

Wow okay so I feel like everyone who has moved to Berlin in the past 10 years has just been skewered by this 111 page book. Glad that’s not me!

Anna & Tom are a millennial couple who have been living the dream in Berlin. They have friends, a full social life, decent paying and flexible jobs and an apartment filled with houseplants. As time goes on they start to feel less satisfied with their lives. Is Berlin changing? Are they changing? Both? Is it both?

I enjoyed this more and more as it went on. It paints this really true picture of Instagram v real life, you can just imagine someone uploading a gorgeous photo while they sit in their house utterly miserable. Everything that needed to be said was said which is always so impressive for a novel so short!

This is just a novella but I gave up after about 20%. I just wasn’t interested in the lives of these boring people especially the way it was written. Maybe I’m too old for this sort of thing.

I could not connect with this book at all. I was not interested in the story nor the characters as I found them to be too insufferable. The writing and length of the book is what kept me motivated to finish it but it was not a book that I enjoyed reading.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

the translation into english was very well done.

the story itself wasn’t really for me.

it was basically a snapshot of the life of a couple that moved to Berlin from spain(? sorry i already forgot because it’s not mentioned as something important were they moved from more so that they came from a mediterranean country and how different life and land and people were to that to where they are now or when they go back) and how they try to appear perfect but are really nor and don’t really know what they are doing or what they are supposed to be doing and just keep on searching without ever really finding their place.


the descriptions were very clearly done and it’s a short book but the actual story was not that interesting for me.
maybe because the free spirited party scene that the couple lived in is not at all what i know or am interested in and can’t understand how anybody wants to do drugs if you don’t need them for health reasons.


so sadly the story wasn’t really good for me, i felt bored not even halfway through the 130 or so pages of this story and kept thinking something more would/should/could happen because nothing interesting was happening. i am not someone that loves reading about just everyday typical life stories, they need to have a little something more for me or be about a person i am really interested in to get invested in it.
which yes that’s real life but i have my own completely boring life so is don’t want to read about it in a way that i feel bored by that too.



that all being said i am sure that this little book will have its fan and become a favorite for someone.

if you love detailed descriptions that you can clearly imagine what places and settings look like? go for it!

if you enjoy going along for a little while people life their lives and you can „spy“ on them and experience that kind of life? perfect!

and as i said right at the start: rhetorical translation was very well done, is easy but nice to read and the word choices were very well done!

Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection is a sharp and unsettling examination of utopian ideals, privilege, and the pursuit of an aesthetically controlled life. Set in an eco-luxury community designed to offer its residents a flawless existence, the novel follows Anna and Tom, a young couple drawn to its promises of sustainability and harmony. However, beneath the polished surface, Latronico unpacks the contradictions of perfectionism—how the desire for order often leads to sterility, and how privilege enables a curated life while shutting out discomforting realities.

I very much enjoyed Latronico's restrained, precise prose - almost the language of a contemporary chronicle in places so that the plot felt both in time and timeless. It's very much a novel about the ethics of escape (from modern life/the self), the tensions between authenticity and artificiality, and the compromises required to sustain an illusion of perfection. I thought Perfection was a compelling, thought-provoking read, ideal for those interested in the intersection of design, philosophy, and social critique.

Not for me, but brilliantly written overall. I just didn't enjoy it but can definitely imagine someone else enjoying it far more. I felt unmoved by the characters, plot, and all of it in general.

Perfection
By Vincenzo Latronico
Translated from the Italian by Sophie Hughes

I was immediately drawn to this book because my lifelong regret has always been that I never lived abroad for any length of time despite the fact that it was my main ambition all through my youth and my twenties, and this is the story of an expat couple, Anna and Tom, from Southern Europe, presumably Italy, who have been living and working in Berlin for some years in the creative design world. My hope was that, through reading, I could capture a little of that continental "je ne sais quoi" that I have always felt so deprived of, vicariously.

No need to fear, this book gives all the feels. It's a story of imagery, of aesthetics, of being right in the heart of the zeitgeist, of realising how cool you are and how you have found the most amazing community a beat before you realise how transient it all is. How fashion changes, ex patriots come and go, how gentrification destroys more than it improves, how the digital arena transitions faster you can blink, how today's cool is tomorrow's passé.

The life Anna and Tom chose is an illusory one, where the grass is greener on the other side. You can move to the other side, but what shade does it appear from there?

I tore through this story so fast, it was impossible to stop thinking about when I wasn't actually reading it. I love the style of writing and language this translator used. I feel she did justice to the original work.

I hope it's not a spoiler to draw attention the date that Anna and Tom finally found their forever home, their perfection?

One you begin to chase perfection will you ever capture it? For longer than it takes for you to realise that you had there for a moment?

Publication date: 13th February 2025
Thanks to #Netgalley and #Fitzcarraldo for providing an eGalley for review purposes

Thoroughly enjoyed this short novel which, I learn at the end, is a form of homage to "Things: A Story of the Sixties" by Georges Perec (so another to add to the list).

Perfection is the story of Anna and Tom who we meet as twenty-somethings newly arrived in Berlin. They are a new breed of workers who deal with digital content. It means their work space and time is fluid. They are in the rapidly evolving city at the height of change. And everyone around them mirrors their own. Buy nothing stays the same and Anna and Tom must adapt as they age even if the city they fell in love with in their twenties does not.

Perfection is a deceptively simple story but it's possible to recognise something of ourselves in them - wanting to stay young but recognising it is impossible.

It's a really good read and even though I've still no idea what their job really was I could empathise with the characters.

Highly recommended.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Fitzcarraldo for the advance review copy. Much appreciated.

This was a short but really interesting meditation on yearning, satisfaction and the desire to curate a “perfect” life. The two protagonists, Anna and Tom, constantly strive for perfection in their work, their lifestyle, their sex life, their travels, and yet are left feeling unfulfilled. In the age of social media and curated images, this was a very poignant read. I also really enjoyed the detailed depictions of Berlin as well as the representation of the joys and challenges of expat life.

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes, is a brilliant and original portrait of contemporary life. Through a millennial couple whose lives unfold like curated Instagram posts, Latronico crafts a fast-paced narrative devoid of dialogue or overt conflict, yet brimming with depth. The lack of dialogue underscores the homogeneity of the couple, emphasizing their seamless, almost surreal harmony. Despite its specific setting, the story resonates universally, offering readers a mirror to their own lives. This varied and profound exploration invites immersion into the ethos of a generation, offering a stark, eye-opening reflection of modern existence.