It’s International Booker Awards time and I didn’t get through the 2025 long or shortlist. This year I won’t get through these lists either. Coincidentally, it is also award time for the regular Booker, The Women’s Prizes—Non Fiction & Fiction, The PenFaulkner, The Dublin Prize and a few select others that I dip in and out from. I won’t be reading those either. I am not a stealth reader – – someone who cruises through the long and short list for the major prizes and reads over 100 books a year. I don’t state my reading statistics anywhere online for public bragging rites. However, sourcing books during prize season is doable for me. Sourcing books during prize season is like conducting a wardrobe update but even better. Sourcing books during prize season is like going to New York or Paris fashion week except for books. So let’s source a prize lists contender from 2025 shall we? In this issue of Bookisshh we’ll explore Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico and translated by Sophie Hughes (2025), a little book that made BOTH the International Booker long and short list and several other prize lists as well.

A fun fact most of the stealth readers aren’t discussing is that Perfection is a 21st century reimagining of Georges Perec’s 1965 novel, Things: A Story of the Sixties. It updates the original’s critique of the 1960s consumerism to examine millennial consumer culture, digital nomadism, and the curation of life as it’s portrayed on social media. Perfection pays literary tribute to Things by mirroring its structure and focusing on a couple, their desires, and their possessions. Thankfully Perfection departs from Things and emphasizes modern consumerism and digital life over neon and Bakelite.

Let’s depart from Perec’s Things because finding an English translation is hard to source and you probably won’t get to it. I wanted to make a point that Latronico’s Perfection is not entirely an original work and this wasn’t mentioned in any of the International Booker award material that provides background material regarding the author or his novel.

Perfection takes place after the Berlin Wall falls and Germany has opened up to expatriates—particularly millennial digital nomads—who are eager to expand their horizons. This book is not pre-internet or pre-cellphones, but does take place during the early development of the internet and the mass explosion of Social Media. Professional opportunity was abundant, living space went from industrial lofts to charming apartments, art and music were exploding and the art of personal curation was born.

Latronico’s book is VERY MILLENNIAL. Every descriptive detail is a catalog of taste-making.. Midcentury modern furniture, banana leaf and dieffenbachia green plants and succulents, the perfect handpicked antique placed in a thoughtful niche, coffee table books stacked spines out, coffee mugs that are quirky and quietly luxurious. No detailed left unconsidered all chosen with the intention of being forward facing and demonstrating taste and a personal brand. Exhausting but invigorating and economy-driving for the masses both then and now.

The story begins with a young couple who work in tech during its early stages. AI and coding were not a major thing yet. They are expats who chose to be child-free and live in Berlin after the fall of the wall. Art, music, and sex are everywhere and they go from scene to scene. They also shop and source a lot to ensure an efficient well curated work/live space. Hard to call it home because they spend such little time there..

Curation fills the emotional void and substitutes for emotional intimacy in Perfection. Every object be it utilitarian or decorative is described in catalogue-esque detail, then carefully placed in order to create a picture-perfect impression of their lifestyle. Who this couple are is demonstrated in their purchases and daily living and not by dialogue or specific actions throughout the narrative. It’s like reading a restoration hardware catalog, and imagining the people who would be in the pictures if there were any. The characters are not drawn in close observation for readers to be able to experience their interiority, goals, and conflicts. The characters are merely photographically aspirational. Latronico offers his readers a surface-oriented and shallow, externalized representation of life.

An interesting observation yet not deeply explored is how expat social networking within the early internet community was the way to get by in Germany which at the time was intensely bureaucratic, not translated and all in German. Much of the nuance and shortcuts were like commodities being bartered. Expats and digital nomads communicated on message boards, meetups and phone calls. There was a light sense of community that eventually became highly transient.

This couple like many other expat digital nomads began to sub-lease their apartment to short term renters. They went from being expat, digital nomads to weekend warriors to short term flaneurs. Their lives were mostly quiet and content. As the couple ages, their travel bucket lists are completed, and their furnishings have fully defined their aesthetic. The party venues have changed and the invitations are few and far between. Everything that formerly made their lives feel full, are now static representations of the past days. However, in a spirit for wanting a full life this couple makes an important decision. This is where I leave you to decide whether or not you wish to read this book.

Was Perfection perfect? In some ways, yes and others no. Perfect, for me is that Latronico asks us questions regarding the fullness of life and what makes our lives full and how that changes overtime. The way it’s not perfect is the emphasis on materialism and seeing and being seen while not forming intimate relationships. Additionally, I’m a big fan of children. They definitely bring challenges to our lives, but we only get smarter and better at living because of them. I’ve told this joke once before… A man walks into his psychiatrist office. He says, “Dr. my brother is a nut. He thinks that he’s a chicken. He walks around like a chicken. He clucks like a chicken. He has feathers like a chicken. He even lays eggs.” To this, the psychiatrist replies, “Why didn’t you have him committed?” The man says, “I can’t. We need the eggs.” This joke may or may not explain why Perfection isn’t perfect but it does demonstrate my value for relationships over curated collections and transient lifestyle. People need to be seen and people need to see others and themselves and Perfection doesn’t offer this.