Perfection

Synopsis

A 2025 International Booker Prize shortlisted novel.

Anna and Tom, an expat couple, have fashioned a dream life for themselves in Berlin. They are young digital creatives exploring the city's possibilities, freelancing with few constraints while filling their apartment with carefully chosen furniture, thriving houseplants, and the quiet rituals of a life curated for both themselves and the internet.

But as the years pass, the shine begins to fade. Friends move away, work grows repetitive, intimacy becomes routine, and even Berlin starts to feel interchangeable with every other creative capital. An attempt to live more ethically ends in uncertainty, and a new life as digital nomads only reveals that, wherever they go, everything looks strangely the same.

Sharp, elegant, and quietly devastating, Perfection is a portrait of a generation searching for authenticity in a world shaped by algorithms, aesthetics, and endless choice. Vincenzo Latronico's first novel to appear in English is a brilliant meditation on identity, ambition, and the subtle emptiness that can hide beneath a perfectly curated life.

About the Author

Vincenzo Latronico is an Italian novelist, translator, and art critic. Born in Rome in 1984, he has translated the works of authors including George Orwell, Oscar Wilde, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Hanif Kureishi into Italian. Perfection, translated by Sophie Hughes, is his first novel to appear in English and was shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize. Hughes is an award-winning literary translator whose work has helped introduce many of the most important contemporary Spanish- and Italian-language writers to English readers.

Publisher
New York Review Books

Publication Date
March 18, 2025

Format
Paperback

Pages
136

Subjects
Literary Fiction · Fiction in Translation · Contemporary Fiction · Berlin · Relationships · Satire · Expat Life

ISBN
9781681378725