An extract from Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes
A taut, spare sociological novel about the emptiness of contemporary existence – scathing and affecting in equal measure
A taut, spare sociological novel about the emptiness of contemporary existence – scathing and affecting in equal measure
Millennial expat couple Anna and Tom are living the dream in Berlin, in a bright, affordable, plant-filled apartment. Their life as young digital creatives revolves around slow cooking, Danish furniture, sexual experimentation and the city’s 24-hour party scene – an ideal existence shared by an entire generation and tantalizingly lived out on social media.
But beyond the images, dissatisfaction and ennui burgeon. Work becomes repetitive. Friends move back home, have children, grow up. Frustrated that their progressive politics amount to little more in practice than boycotting Uber, tipping in cash, or never eating tuna, Anna and Tom make a fruitless attempt at political activism. Feeling increasingly trapped in their picture-perfect life, the couple takes ever more radical steps in the pursuit of an authenticity and a sense of purpose perennially beyond their grasp.
Vincenzo Latronico
About the Author
Vincenzo Latronico is an Italian novelist, translator and art critic
Sophie Hughes
About the Translator
Born in Surrey, Sophie Hughes is a literary translator from Spanish and ItalianAn astute, cringe-making and often laugh-out-loud funny portrait of everyday privilege and modern aspirations
— The 2025 judges on Perfection
What the judges said
‘An astute, discomfiting, cringe-making and often laugh-out-loud funny portrait of everyday privilege and modern aspirations, following an expat couple in Berlin. Tom and Anna are defined by their material lives, working their way through a tick-list of clichés readers will recognise in themselves and experience as a dig in the ribs. Compassionate as well as cynical, the book – in an exquisite, precise and perfectly executed translation from Italian by Sophie Hughes – holds up a mirror up to the way so many people aspire to and are let down by today’s off-the-shelf measures of success. A startlingly refreshing read.’
What the critics said
Thomas McMullan, The Guardian
‘Yet Perfection transcends its satire of 2010s hipsterdom through the depth of Latronico’s sociological observations. This chronicle of contemporary Berlin is strongest in its articulation of how a certain kind of globalisation dislocates us from our surroundings. Anna and Tom’s actions, plainly stated, devastatingly illustrate a homogenisation shown to colonise minds and bodies as much as cities.’
Billie Walker, The Big Issue
‘Latronico’s first novel to be translated into English by Sophie Hughes, Perfection goes beyond the easy comparison of a curated online image and the reality beyond the screen. Through the couple whose world as they know it would surely end without a stable wi-fi connection, we see a deeper problem with a curated lifestyle. Over the decades of Anna and Tom’s relationship, the internet morphs the landscape, changing Lisbon and Berlin from cities with distinct cultural identities to the interchangeable global style that feels like home for the remote workers of the world. This is a compulsive read that demonstrates the new global aesthetic that has shaped our lives.’
Rachel Connolly, The Telegraph
‘The appeal of writing like this, as far as I understand it, is that it’s easy to read, yet endowed with a veneer of erudition and sophistication. What could speak more to the millennial sensibility than that? Maybe it’s too much to expect us to read a formally experimental novel that hits closer to home. But I found myself craving a bolder execution, in both content and style – not something this safe. I won’t spoil the ending of Perfection. Suffice it to say that, appropriately, it involves one of the other great millennial deities: inheritance.’
Claudia Cockerell, The Standard
‘Anyone from that milieu will feel they have met Annas and Toms. But without any direct speech the book reads as one long list, and the endless catalogue of the couple’s Danish furniture and Vietnamese steel knives and handmade ceramics becomes exhaustive. It’s like a deadpan collection of captions from Real Housewives of Clapton, the niche meme account which skewers ELCs with similar precision. While Latronico is clear-eyed on the fundamental hollowness of the modern millennial metropolitan existence, there’s a sense in which these people, who we see enough of in real life, have already passed their sell-by date.’
Other nominated books by Sophie Hughes
Written in a chilling torrent of prose by one of Mexico’s most thrilling new writers, Paradais explores the explosive fragility of Mexican society. Translated by Sophie Hughes.
Fernanda Melchor’s formidable portrait of Mexico and its demons, written with a brutal lyricism that is as affecting as it is enthralling. The English edition is translated by Sophie Hughes
A masterpiece of metafiction, Mac and His Problem is Enrique Vila-Matas’s testament to the power and playfulness of great literature
Intense, intelligent and extraordinarily sensitive, Alia Trabucco Zerán’s remarkable debut presents a new way to count the cost of generational trauma
