43 pages • 1-hour read
Vincenzo Latronico, Transl. Sophie HughesPerfection
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Background
Historical Context: The 2015 Migrant Crisis in Europe
In 2015, significant numbers of refugees fled armed conflicts in countries including Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, seeking new lives in Europe. Primary sea crossing routes included Libya to Italy and Turkey to Greece, and thousands died in the attempt. During 2015, 1.3 million people applied for asylum in the European Union, Norway, and Switzerland. The number was more than double the previous record of 700,000 applications in a year, which occurred in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union (“Number of Refugees to Europe Surges to Record 1.3 Million in 2015.” Pew Research Center, 2 Aug. 2016).
Outrage over the crisis spread via social media platforms. Perfection refers to the real-life images of the corpse of a young boy, Aylan Kurdi, who died in the attempt to cross from Syria to Greece and washed up on a Turkish beach in September 2015. The stark, graphic images stirred action from human rights groups and governments alike. Two similarly landmark tragedies were the drowning of more than 600 refugees whose boat capsized in Libyan waters in April, and the discovery of the bodies of 71 migrants and refugees inside an abandoned refrigeration truck near the Austria-Hungary border (Spindler, William. “2015: The Year of Europe’s Refugee Crisis.” UNHCR, 8 Dec. 2015).
The reaction of European Union member states varied widely and was the subject of extensive critique. Many nations immediately closed their borders, and distribution of migrants was very uneven. Germany accepted the largest portion of refugees, as represented in Anna and Tom’s brief and ineffective attempts to help with the crisis in the novel. Other novels that address the 2015 migrant crisis include Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck, which focuses on African refugees in Germany, and What Strange Paradise (2021) by Omar El Akkad, which includes a Syrian refugee who survives a shipwreck and washes ashore in Greece.
Literary Context: Things: A Story of the Sixties, by Georges Perec
Latronico notes in the Acknowledgements to Perfection that, “This novel came about as a tribute to Things: A Story of the Sixties (1965), by Georges Perec; anything good in it owes a lot to him” (125). Perec’s novella focuses on Jerome and Sylvie, a young couple in Paris who take jobs in the emerging market research field in the 1960s. They become obsessed, both professionally and personally, with consumerism. As in Perfection, Things refers to Jerome and Sylvie as a unit rather than individuals, and features some of the same narrative techniques of detachment, a focus on objects instead of inner states, a near-total absence of dialogue, and a careful use of grammatical tense to reflect shifts in time.
The couples in Things and Perfection also share many similarities. Jerome and Sylvie work as freelancers in a relatively new field, eschewing more traditional middle-class career paths, with their career choice echoed by Anna and Tom’s modern “digital nomad” work-from-home roles in graphic design. Like Anna and Tom, Jerome and Sylvie socialize in an insular, privileged social circle that places a high premium on consumption and outward appearances, all while struggling with a sense of ennui. Perec’s novel draws attention to how consumerism can bring material comfort, but at the price of emotional alienation and social fracturing. Jerome and Sylvie’s dissatisfaction is mirrored in Tom and Anna’s struggle to find real meaning in their lives and relationship despite their material wealth.
More specifically, the novel originated as a way to stay busy during lockdown in 2020, with Latronico becoming especially drawn to the impacts of social media on users’ lives. As Latronico explained in an interview, “I’d been struggling for years to capture the way our inner life is shaped by the flow of images we see online” (Cummins, Anthony. “Author Vincenzo Latronico: ‘I Left Italy Out of Sadness.’” The Guardian, 29 Mar. 2025). Perfection reflects the negative impacts of social media usage by drawing attention to how Anna and Tom constantly seek to curate the image of having a “perfect” life, even though the reality is far less satisfying for both of them.
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