Perfection cover image

Perfection

 Listen to a sample

Get 30 days of Standard free

€6.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for €0.00
More purchase options

Perfection

By: Vincenzo Latronico, Sophie Hughes -translator
Narrated by: Sophie Roberts
Try for €0.00

€6.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for €12.62

Buy Now for €12.62

Season's Savings | 0.99 €/mo for 3 months

6.99 €/month thereafter - terms apply. Cancel monthly.

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 City Life Genre Fiction Literature & Fiction Satire Urban
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
All stars
Most relevant
Gut gefallen hat mir die ewige Erzählung deren Leben, die mich selber fast schon nervös gemacht hat. Das Ende hätte länger sein können.

Ein Buch über die leere einer Generation.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I found the book rather boring and bleak and found the name dropping of places in Berlin too much. Less would have been just fine

Bleak and missing a plot

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Light reading that mostly young /millennial expats in Berlin can relate to. Nothing much happens, no issue covered in depth.

Much ado about nothing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Maybe the style of writing is supposed to reflect the title. Perfection makes it hard to feel connected. The endless description of the flat sets the tone. Ana an Tom are well profiled but there is no story to follow. I found it very boring and almost clinical.

Distanced description of a life

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.