Tom and Anna are freelance creatives and millennial expats living in Berlin. Like most of their peers, they are energized by taking advantage of all the city has to offer them, and of course, documenting their activities on social media.
The book follows them as they drift through life, friends, jobs, sex, political activism, and ambition. At times they want more than they have; other times they’re overwhelmed by it all. Should they consider polyamory? Should they move somewhere other than Berlin?
As they grow older and their friends follow different paths, they start to wonder about what their futures hold. And they realize that the things they are starting to dislike about Berlin and their lives are partially the fault of their generation.
“They realized they had contributed to the problem that was starting to affect them, but they knew it in an unacknowledged, almost imperceptible way, like smokers when they think about cancer…Gentrification, as they understood it, was something other people did.
This was on the shortlist for the Booker Prize last year. Vincenzo Latronico’s prose is beautiful, but often the story has paragraph after paragraph of description, to echo the characters’ obsession with conspicuous consumption. It definitely made me think, even as I didn’t really warm to it.
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