On a brilliant afternoon in September, the Italian writer Vincenzo Latrononico rolled a cigarette in a room bathed in sun in Milan. His house, like the apartment which opens his latest novel, “Perfection”, is an illustration of manuals from the millennial penchant to display signifiers of carefully organized lifestyle.
A Monstera grew up on a cabinet in the middle of the century. The orange shades of a saucepan The crucible detached against white kitchen shelves. There was a Berber carpet and a Bauhaus armchair and a long table punctuated by Enzo Mari chairs. A pair of French doors has opened on a balcony overlooking the wilted yellow walls of the Isola district.
He had recently returned to this remarkable apartment after 13 years in Berlin. This decision meant to return to the city, he had left disillusioned when the squatting collective with which he was involved lost his battle against the real estate promoters of Milan.
“We were engaged in a great fight against the gentrification of isola. We had a program after school, we had the churches on our side, and for a while, it seemed to be a model of realization of the district together. ” He pointed his cigarette to the balcony and laughed. “But as you can see, we have lost.”
In his books, M. Latron, a 41 -year -old mustachioed man with golden frame glasses and a single earring, portrayed the characters of the Y generation who aspire to a better world. They want to end neoliberal globalization; They want to stop the gentrification of their neighborhood. In “Perfection”, a short novel selected for the Booker International 2025 prize on a young expatriate couple in Berlin, the protagonists want a beautiful apartment.
Mr. Latronico had thought about his own desire for this objective when, during the pandemic, he opened an Instagram account “because he was bored and alone”.
“I started to see that everyone’s apartment looked like mine,” he said, admitting that he too observed in himself a “kind of split” between his desires for political change and a refined way of life. “And I started to see the origins – why did I want a crucible?” What was going on there? “
He suddenly gushed from his chair. Reflecting cooking beers, he continued.
“It made me think, ok, so I want to write a book in which we see the impact that the Internet has on us, but it should not depend on a specific platform or technology, because these changes. So I faced a little and wondered: how would you explain this to Cicero? ”
But explaining the culture of social media in Cicero was not a simple task. In Berlin, Mr. Latronico had spent seven years trying and not writing the novel he imagined.
“At the beginning, I had an intrigue with a guru of the self-optimizer, but I realized that there was something in the way in which the online dynamics take place which make them very difficult and very boring to describe in a traditional novel,” he said. “And then I read Perec’s” things “and I said to myself, guy, this guy did it 50 years ago.”
Like a musician who samples an old disco rhythm and transforms him into something modern, Mr. Latronono told the canonical novel by Georges Perec from 1965 “Things: A Story of the Sixties” – on a Parisian marketing couple who wishes obsessively consumer goods – and has replaced material objects with signaling of a millennial lifestyle. He then exchanged the consumption culture of the 1960s for the lifestyle focused on social media in the 2010s.
He entitled the novel according to “Excellency and Perfections”, an online performance play by the conceptual artist Amalia Ulman.
In Mr. Latronon’s book, Anna and Tom are graphic designers of a “city in southern southern Europe and peripheral” who moves to Berlin to reinvent themselves. They work on brilliant cell laptops of cafes filled with plants, attend gallery openings and techno celebrations. They drink natural wine and unique coffee, carefully building a mythology of urban life which has circulated “on Instagram food of an entire generation”.
He said he was “deeply, deeply depressed” when he wrote and pessimistic about his perspectives. He had planned to use any lead that he could make an Italian book agreement to recycle as a carpenter or real estate agent. “I sent an email to my agent and said,” I’m sorry, this book is unprecedented. He has no dialogue. He has no plot. It’s a copy of another book. “”
“Perfection” has become an international bestseller. The novel has sold 42 countries, and the English editions, translated by Sophie Hughes, sold more than 85,000 copies.
“I think the Zeitgeist has caught up with the sociological criticism of the book,” said Jacques Testard de Fitzcarraldo Editions, a little British publisher who published three Nobel Prize winners from its foundation a little more than a decade. “Perfection” is his best-selling book of the year, he said.
In an ironic touch, the cover of the book appeared in memes and on social media flows all summer, such as lifestyle signifiers than the novel satiris. Last month, he was appointed to the Longlist for the National Book Awards.
“There is a thrill between the aspiration of being a cosmopolitan or digital nomad and who also wants to make fun of these people,” said Nick during, the director of advertising in New York Review of Books, the American publisher of the book.
But the book also draws from a more serious feeling, said Lauren Oyler, a friend writer of Mr. Latronono. “It is not a satire; This is a commentary on what Vincenzo calls “the identical struggle of a generation for a different life,” said Ms. Oyler, whose novel, “Fake Accounts”, also presents a protagonist who moves to Berlin. (Mrs. Oyler lives there herself.) “It is the sadness of our generation. How we all participate in this world’s digital economy and lifestyle. ”
The ideas with which the novel play – how social media flatten culture, how desire is shaped by online images, the futility of community construction through consumption – are taken from the Latronon’s own life.
Braised in Milan by parents of the middle class, Mr. Latrononico published his first novel at 24 years old. The book, on a group of young activists traveling to the Genoa G8 demonstrations, “spectacularly bad,” he said. After his collective Squat Isola lost his building, Mr. Latronono sucked to escape the policy of Italy.
In 2009, after having received an insurance payment from a traffic accident, he moved to Berlin, attracted by the low rents of the city and its bohemian image. His second novel, About A Milan Real Estate, with a group of squatters, won the Premio Napoli and established Mr. Latronono as a voice to come in Italian fiction.
He described his life in 2010 Berlin as “very individualistic”, filled with art world celebrations and dinners visually pleasant to new expatriate friends.
“I think I would go and go for gas,” he said. “I said – I am in Berlin, I live this perfect life, how could I ask for something else?” While, in fact, I was very alone. ”
A warm Wednesday evening, Mr. Latrononico dined in Gloria, a restaurant belonging to his close friend Tommaso Melili, chef and culinary writer. Since Stanley Tucci presented Gloria in a Tiktok video last year, the spot was invaded by Americans.
“It’s like my second house,” said Latronono, sipping a glass of misty wine.
Upon his return to Milan, Mr. Latronono moved with his fiancée, the literary agent Arianna Miazzo and their two cats. (Mr. Latronon and Mrs. Miazzo were married this month.) He also co-founded a group cat for his friends in the literary community. They exchange hundreds of texts per day – “We are all freelancers, you know” – and the readings and the Milan festivals together.
New Yorker’s staff writer Kyle Chayka appeared at the table, dressed in an identical outfit with blue petrol denim shirts on collar t-shirts with white crew collar.
Mr. Latronono told Mr. Chayka that a source of inspiration for “perfection” was “airspace”, Mr. Chayka’s test in 2016 arguing that internet culture had spread a homogeneous aesthetic around the world.
“Each restaurant, in Buenos Aires or Milan or Berlin, is the same, with a Monstera factory and a menu written on the blackboard,” said Latronon. “And in a way, everyone thinks that it expresses their personal style.”
Mr. Chayka laughed. “And yet, we are there, drinking pets and wearing matching outfits.”
During the English -speaking voices, Mr. Latronon and Mr. Chayka discussed the changing aspirations of their generation. Having both entered the mature age, they no longer dares the urban lifestyle of their youth. Completing their glasses from a second bottle of wine, Mr. Latronon and Mr. Chayka discovered that they both thought of moving to the campaign in southern Europe.
This is what the expatriate couple of “perfection” decided to do after Berlin’s fatigue. After being involved in activism during the migrant crisis in 2015, they discover that they do not have the tools to change anything: “Not only had Anna and Tom did not have the chance to fight for a radically different world, but they could not even imagine it.”
Now in the thirties, they return to their Mediterranean homeland, in search of “a feeling of freedom and adventure”.
“It’s such a millennial snapshot,” said Chayka. “My wife and I are talking about one day by buying a farm somewhere in Spain.”
“Ah, but does not buy in Spain,” said Latronono with concern. “They have no water.”
He opened a real estate application on this phone and pulled several houses in the hills of Piedmont.
“I really think I will buy one of these houses,” he said. “Here, they will not miss water, and the temperatures are not too hot in summer. And look at the prices. “
Mr. Chayka watched and licked his lips. “Can you send me the name of this area?”
