Author Vincenzo Latronico: ‘I left Italy out of sadness'
Vincenzo Latronico, 40, was born in Rome and grew up in Milan. In 2009, he moved to Berlin, the setting of his fourth novel, Perfection, currently longlisted (in Sophie Hughes's translation) for the International Booker prize. Ecstatically reviewed, it updates Georges Perec's 1965 novel Things: A Story of the Sixties, about advertising's impact on an aspirational young French couple, recast by Latronico as expat digital creatives whose first reflex 'if they spilled some coffee... was to press Command-Z' to undo it. Speaking from Milan, his home again since 2023, Latronico laughs when I quote the line: 'That happens to me all the time!'
Why did you want to rewrite Perec's Things?
It was almost a way to keep my mental health in lockdown. I thought: 'OK, you're not managing to write anything creative, so just pedantically rewrite Perec.' It took on a life of its own but began as an exercise in keeping busy. I'd been struggling for years to capture the way our inner life is shaped by the flow of images we see online. My sexuality is defined by images I've seen of how people have sex; my apartment is defined by images of other people's apartments... I read Things and immediately saw parallels. Perec was trying to describe the life of someone whose identity is defined by their relationship to objects. He flipped the hierarchy of a traditional novel by putting his characters in the background; the detail of their surroundings becomes the main stage, which was exactly what I needed.
What attracted you to writing in such an impassive style?
I was trained by reviewing for the art magazine Frieze. I'd be giving my opinion on works of art and my editor would say: 'No: describe the pieces in detail and make your opinion transpire from the way you describe them.' Ultimately, that aligned with my way of writing. I have a terrible ear for dialogue and can never quote verbatim what somebody said, even at important moments of my life. But I memorise details of clothing immediately; description, more than dialogue, resonates with what seems salient to me in the world.
How did you strike a balance between satire and sympathy? I'd never claim I've done anything better than Perec, but he clearly judges his characters as fools brainwashed by consumerism. I didn't want a smug satire about the superficiality of millennial life – it's my life! The chapter that most closely represents my thinking is the one about sex. Anna and Tom have passionate sex, even after 10 years, but they're afraid it isn't enough. This is the 'extension of the domain of struggle' Michel Houellebecq refers to in the title of his first novel [translated into English as Whatever]. Once you start saying: 'This aspect of my life could be optimised,' it immediately isn't enough, because anything can be 'better' by some definition. This also happened to me with food. In the past, you'd make some pasta, a salad, and that'd be it. Then it became: 'It shouldn't only be healthy, but also look good.' Once something enters the domain of optimisation, there's no turning back.
Was the book as rapturously received in Italy?
Within a month in the UK, it's sold as many copies as in three years in Italy [laughs]. Italian literature looks more to the past. People felt the novel wasn't something that spoke about everyday life but was instead an exotic document of something that happens elsewhere.
What first got you into writing?
Playing Dungeons & Dragons as a kid. I wrote heaps of fantasy and basically taught myself English to understand Magic: The Gathering.
You've translated F Scott Fitzgerald and Isaac Asimov, among many other writers. Has your work as a translator shaped your fiction?
The effort to inhabit the way somebody else uses language widens the boundaries of what you think is possible. Being a translator is like hosting a writer literally within your own voice; when the guest leaves, they maybe leave a pair of shoes behind and you start wearing them.
What's Italy like as a place to write?
When I left for Berlin, it was a different universe; now there's a thriving community of writers my age and younger. In Berlin, I was part of an international community of writers but almost nobody could read one another. We spoke in German or English but the Germans couldn't read my books and the Americans couldn't read my books or the Germans' books. We'd talk about Sheila Heti or Rachel Cusk but not about what we were doing. It's part of the reason I moved back.
Tell us what you read growing up.
Comic books, obsessively. I listened to the album Tales of Mystery and Imagination by the Alan Parsons Project because it was referenced in a series I loved, [Battle Angel] Alita. When I realised the album was based on a book by Edgar Allan Poe, I got it out of the library - probably the first book I read that school hadn't forced me to. I remember so clearly the afternoon I read The Cask of Amontillado; I could feel my heart beating from the tension.
What was the last novel you enjoyed?In Ascension by Martin MacInnes. I'll definitely write science fiction one day but I'm not ready yet.
How come you left Italy for Berlin in the first place?
Out of sadness; I was tired of politics. My first novel [Ginnastica e rivoluzione, 2008] was about the G8 in Genoa in 2001, one of the biggest demos in Italy's history, which got nothing, except that a kid was killed by police. It showed the inefficacy of a way of doing politics that had started in the 60s. In the 00s, I was part of a collective in Milan that squatted a building to organise many activities: an after-school club, community gardening, free meals with leftovers from food markets, a collaborative gallery involving local schools and artists. It was an early anti-gentrification fight; of course, we lost. If you Google Milan, the luxury skyscrapers you see with the forest on top [the Bosco Verticale] were built on our building. After we got evicted, I wanted to move somewhere where I was no longer a citizen, where I had no stake and couldn't fight for anything but just care about my own business. I'm not proud of that. Perfection is the story of two people sheltering themselves from the real world, whatever that is.
Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes, is published by Fitzcarraldo (£12.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
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