DATE08.05.26TIME7:30 PM
One shared conversation across the city
This Month's Selection
PERFECTION
by Vincenzo Latronico
translated by Sophie Hughes
THE PERFECT LIFE,
FROM THE OUTSIDE
Anna and Tom are millennial digital creatives who move to Berlin, settle into a sun-drenched Neukölln flat, and build a life that looks — from any angle, on any feed — exactly right. Slow-cooked dinners. Danish furniture. Long weekends, open relationships, a city that never closes.
Then the years go by. Friends leave. The flat starts to feel small. The work feels smaller. They try activism. They try Lisbon. They try Sicily. Wherever they land, the same life is waiting for them, lit slightly differently.
A novella written as a tribute to Georges Perec's Things, shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize, and quietly one of the sharpest books about being alive on the internet right now. Join bookedclub for an evening of conversation about the gap between the life we're living and the one we're showing.
WHY WE CHOSE THIS BOOK
A Mirror
If you've ever curated a feed, a flat, or a self, this book is about you. Uncomfortably so.
Short, Sharp, Loaded
136 pages that feel like a slow exhale. Easy to finish in a weekend. Hard to stop thinking about for a month.
Made for a Table
Wine, a long dinner, and a book about what we're really doing with our lives. The perfect pairing.
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
“A jewel of a novel: precisely cut, intricately faceted, prismatically dazzling.”
— LAUREN GROFF
“The great Berlin novel we've all been waiting for.”
— GIDEON LEWIS-KRAUS
“Incisively captured what it feels like to participate in the globalized culture of the Internet era.”
— KYLE CHAYKA
“A scathing novel about contemporary existence — globalization, homogenization, the internet.”
— LAUREN OYLER
FREQUENTLY
ASKED
QUESTIONS
Everything you need to know about joining one shared conversation across the city.