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Perfection

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Perfection

By: Vincenzo Latronico, Sophie Hughes -translator
Narrated by: Sophie Roberts
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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 World Literature
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I think this book plays on the idea of what is perfection? In terms of where you live, your job, your time and really is it attainable? This couple is searching for something that may or may not exist for them. And in the end is your idea of perfection everything you thought it would be??? Did I enjoy this book not really but I think I need a re listen

Perfection???

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condensed lives and stories, capturing worlds; leaving me with so much to ponder.Bravo. Read in one sitting

stunning writing

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unmistakable language of irony. it's not a light read, but definitely a enlightening one. highly recommend

dystopian yet gripping

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Beautifully written .
A very good spoken performance . I would read anything else this writer has done or will do .

Very good

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A brilliant evocation of a certain kind of rootless life of a couple from southern Europe living in Germany. It captures the falseness of the online world with its carefully choreographed images that bear no relation to reality. The couple's life seems increasingly empty and aimless as the world around them becomes more gentrified and homogeneous and expensive. And they contribute to that change with their work as web designers. Told in a cold and distant voice in the manner of Flesh, it is deeply unsettling and gripping.

slow start but worth sticking with

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