Shortlisted For The International Booker Prize 2025
A taut, spare sociological novel about the emptiness of contemporary existence – scathing and affecting in equal measure.
Millennial expat couple Anna and Tom are living the dream in Berlin – in a bright, plant-filled apartment in Neukölln. They are young digital creatives, freelancers without too many constraints. They have a passion for food, progressive politics, sexual experimentation and Berlin’s 24-hour party scene. Their ideal existence is also that of an entire generation, lived out on Instagram, but outside the images they create for themselves, dissatisfaction and ennui burgeon.
Their work as graphic designers becomes repetitive. Friends move back home, have children, grow up. An attempt at political activism during the refugee crisis proves fruitless. And in that picture-perfect life Anna and Tom feel increasingly trapped, yearning for an authenticity and a sense of purpose that seem perennially just out of their grasp.
With the stylistic mastery of Georges Perec and nihilism of Michel Houellebecq, Perfection is beautifully written and brilliantly scathing.