Perfections, an anagram-titled work spanning 160 pages, arrives with a compact yet piercing clarity from Italian novelist Vincenzo Latronico. Born in Rome in 1984, Latronico grounds his critique of contemporary Europe in a sharply observed portrait of a rising extractor elite and the omnipresent influence of digital culture across cities like Barcelona.
Anna and Tom, a striking Italian couple in their early professional years, inhabit Berlin in a life that blends laptop toil, social scenes, and curatorial evenings at alternative galleries in the East. Like many, they live inside social feeds. Latronico has explained that the novel emerges from a desire to map a life dominated by images and text from dawn to night, a life that reshapes dreams, self-expression, and political sensibility (Latronico, discussion cited). The work asserts that digital immersion can redefine intimate bonds and public discourse alike.
The narrative follows Anna and Tom as they navigate two layers of reality: the tangible world and a digital bubble inhabited by expats in Barcelona or Milan, described with precise, almost forensic care. The author notes a parallel with urban gentrification, suggesting that online flows elevate interiors and reshape neighborhoods at a distance (Latronico, analysis cited).
Beyond being a first in its focus on digital nomads, Perfections captures a particular ache generated by networks: a sense of something being stolen, a rising preoccupation with authenticity as curated online life continually outpaces lived truth (Latronico, commentary cited).
Maximize profit extraction
Latronico contends that a new vocabulary is needed to name this feeling. His approach reads almost like a forensic examination, drawing comparisons to Perec and other writers who illuminate how daily life can become a mirror for larger economic forces. The novel traces Anna and Tom’s interior design sensibilities—Scandinavian chairs, Monocle and The New Yorker magazines generously stacked, and even the humble avocado seed—as symbols of a modern, aspirational domesticity that many readers will recognize (Latronico, reflections cited).
Latronico distinguishes between two kinds of homogeneity: a globalized, top-down sameness that makes McDonald’s, urban layouts, and storefronts feel identical worldwide, and a bottom-up homogeneity that emerges through individual choices shaped by shared economic incentives. This second strand, the author argues, is where contemporary life converges across cities such as Stockholm, Berlin, and Milan. In the novel, Anna and Tom attempt to monetize their small Berlin apartment and then relocate to Lisbon in search of a freer territorial grind (Latronico, commentary cited).
A permanent Erasmus
Latronico arrived in Berlin a year after the 2008 crisis, stepping in as an art critic with a wry sense of humor about the moment. The city becomes a recurring setting—Berghain and Tresor nights, Prenzlauer Berg afternoons, Panoramabar sunrises, and the winter austerity that follows. The author describes this as a living, hedonistic, affordable, and bohemian pulse that informs the couple’s rhythms (Latronico, recollections cited).
The perpetual Erasmus mood—being 35 but behaving as if 23 or 27—frames the novel’s temporal tempo. A scrolling life online makes time feel elastic, while real-world events press in, sometimes violently, as immigration issues and sudden crises intrude into Ana and Tom’s everyday. The narrative makes room for public calamities to intrude through the algorithm’s selective lens—moments of sunsets, seed salads, and jars of home fermentation—shaping what the couple encounters and remembers (Latronico, observation cited).
Photo credits: Jordi Cotrina, Barcelona.
The book offers a meditation on how global trends translate into local experiences. It’s not just about the abundance of sameness in shopping streets or housing blocks; it’s about the pressure to reproduce advantage without centralized planning. The Berlin setting, in turn, becomes a lens on how cities host layered economies, social dynamics, and a perpetual search for opportunity (Latronico, analysis cited).
A moment of reflection returns to the role of digital numbness in modern life. Social networks can dull political engagement while amplifying superficial signals. Latronico has long explored community activism in Milan, and in Perfections he ties that impulse to a broader commentary on modern life: a world where online interactions deliver rapid recognition yet often fail to produce tangible change (Latronico, critique cited).
What awakens, then, is the tension between online validation and real-world impact. The housing crisis, the cost of living, and shifting urban landscapes press on middle-class routines in cities like Barcelona, Berlin, and Milan. Latronico suggests a looming breakdown if the pace of change continues unchecked, predicting a moment when the status quo can no longer absorb the pressures of everyday life (Latronico, projection cited).
In the Berlin setting, the imagined future is contemplated through a symbol—the Tempelhof airfield. Once a buzzing hub, it stands now as an expansive, history-laden canvas that could host social housing or become a public park. The debate over its fate mirrors broader questions about urban priorities and the distribution of privilege, leading to a stark reminder: Berlin’s identity is inseparable from its evolving landscape and the people who claim space within it (Latronico, opinion cited).