There is this book I read a few years ago, which I loved, but I didn’t think of writing a post about it.
When I started writing about Italian books here, my number one rule was to focus only on books with an English translation. This, I thought, would make the post more inclusive and useful for people who are interested in Italian literature yet have not masterered the language enough to read in Italian.
Sometimes, I break this rule, especially when I come across a book that I think is absolutely worth mentioning, but I am always happier if an Italian book is available in English as well. For this reason, I regularly check for English translations of contemporary Italian novels, but sometimes I miss really important ones.
This happened with the book I am writing about today: I realized it was available in translation only when I read that it was longlisted for the International Booker Prize! That’s so bad of me! I loved that book so much, but I thought it was too niche to be translated into other languages, so I simply forgot to check.
Luckily, it was listed for such an important prize, and since then, I have seen it on multiple Instagram posts, which means that it’s getting all the attention it deserves – and I can now write about it. The book is Le perfezioni by Vincenzo Latronico (available in English as Perfection, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions), which was published in Italy in 2022 and was a huge success in Italy at the time.
I remember buying the book on the wave of many social media posts about it. I was really curious to read it but also quite scared because sometimes, books that are hugely popular online can be a true disappointment. Well, I can tell you that it was not the case. The book is brilliant, beautifully written, and incredibly on point. It was such a great read!
Le perfezioni follows Anna and Tom, a millennial expat couple who live the life of their dreams in a trendy Berlin neighborhood. They live in a plant-filled apartment that seems to be coming directly out of Instagram and work as freelance creatives. Their life is the perfect stereotype you can find on way too many social media posts. Everything seems perfect, yet, little by little, their life becomes less of a dream.
Anna and Tom start feeling depressed, disillusioned, and trapped in the life they have so carefully curated. They yearn for a change, and the solution they find is so perfectly stereotyped – yet so true, I have seen it happen so many times – that I had to laugh when I read it. I am not a millennial myself, but being on Instagram since the very beginning and having spent time with many creatives over the years, I think this is a brilliant portrayal of a very specific Instagram-fueled niche of young creatives who thought they were alternatives, yet they conformed to very specific rules of perfection.
I am using the past because the phenomenon Latronico describes is the hipsterdom of the early 2010s, a trend that has disappeared now (or simply become mainstream). However, his sharp criticism of conformity is undoubtedly still valid today. The book is a satire of a specific generation whose quest to be different and special led them all to live the same life with the same interests, passions, and possessions. But it doesn’t apply to millennials only, it applies to all the people who offer curated versions of themselves online, where personal branding is the most important thing.
That of Anna and Tom is a very simple story that we watch in horror because we undoubtedly see something of ourselves – or our society, at least – in them. I highly recommend reading it if you are a millennial, if you love Instagram or a certain Instagram-based aesthetic, or if you are interested in a witty analysis of some aspects of contemporary life.
By the way, have you read any interesting contemporary Italian novels recently?
Are you looking for an Italian practice book that can help you work on your language skills in a fun and relaxed way? Well, I can recommend two! Un’estate al lago and Andiamo al mare are two practice books I wrote to help B1 students practice Italian grammar, listening, reading comprehension, and writing while reading a fun story and learning more about Italian pop culture.
Leave a Reply