Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

In his afterword, Italian author Vincenzo Latronico says that his new book Perfection (translated by Sophie Hughes) is a homage to a Georges Perec book Things: A Story of the Sixties. With that in mind, perhaps Perfection should be subtitled “A Story of the 2010s” (although it starts a little earlier than this). In it, Latronico delves deep into the lives of a pair of millennial ex-pats trying to live a different kind of life and not always succeeding. Along the way he charts the major touch points of history through the decade or so that he follows them.

Perfection opens with a series of perfect photographs of the Berlin flat rented by Italian ex-pats Tom and Anna. Very quickly readers learn that this is very much an idealised version of their flat, designed to attract short term sub-tenants when they go on holiday. Their real lives, as web designers, are much more chaotic. Tom and Anna came to Berlin to get away from what they see as the inevitability of life in Italy. They quickly become part of an ex-pat scene, living from job to job with a shifting set of friends and acquaintances. Latronico follows the pair as the world changes around them, their skills become less in demand and the areas that they frequent change and become gentrified.

Perfection was shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize. It is in some ways a small novel – focussing squarely on its two protagonists. But through them Latronico manages to shine a light on a whole generation (or at least a representative sample of that generation) – the so called “digital natives” who grew up in the internet age and both succeed and suffer as a result. It is full of sharp observations and commentary like this on social media:

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… [T]his jumping from screen to screen and from window to window was actually more of a flow state. The very idea of a ‘distraction’ assumed a separation between the personal and the professional – between news stories and banter, project pitches and catchy pop hooks. If there had ever been such a distinction, it had long since evaporated. They would drift from one thing to another because one thing was another.

Perfection manages to walk the tightrope of being very much deep in the lives of Tom and Anna – their relationship and business struggles, their hopes and dreams, and ultimately their attempts to recapture the wildness of their earlier years abroad – but also to provide a fascinating insight into very particular aspects and communities living through the second decade of the 21st century. Latronico is not claiming to be reflecting the whole of the world but the part that he does illuminate is fascinating.

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

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8.0/10