2025 International Booker Prize Shortlist 160

A razor-sharp novel from one Italy's most exciting authors, about a millennial couple's quest for authenticity in a life designed according to social media trends. They have everything to make them happy. Expat couple Anna and Tom are living the dream in Berlin, in a bright, plant-filled apartment. Young, cool digital creatives, they enjoy slow cooking, Danish furniture, progressive politics, sexual experimentation and the city's twenty-four-hour party scene. It's exactly the life they had imagined for themselves. But they begin to feel disillusioned, bored. Work becomes repetitive. Friends move away, have children, grow up. An attempt at political activism proves fruitless, since their direct action amounts to taking an Uber only if it is snowing, tipping in cash, never eating tuna. Trapped in a lifestyle optimised for digital perfection, yearning for authenticity, they find themselves doing something they could never have predicted. Vincenzo Latronico's stylistic mastery, wit and wry humour make Perfection a brilliant novel about contemporary life. PRAISE FOR PERFECTION- 'Sharp and revelatory. Latronico demonstrates that, despite their vanity, his characters Anna and Tom are not so different from others whose lives are conditioned by the consumer economy-they want what others want- a life that is legible to them yet not prescribed. Latronico is a brilliant and fearless writer. I recommend this novel to every reader I meet.' - Ellena Savage, author of Blueberries