Who hasn’t dreamed, in these chaotic times, of another world—a world free of wars, autocrats, and tech oligarchs? A world that’s more beautiful, fair, peaceful, in short, more humane. All those whose longing in this respect remains unfulfilled can now dive into Sibylle Berg’s new novel for a few hours.
Even the title sounds promising: “La Bella Vita” (Amazon affiliate link) sketches a life beyond the neoliberal capitalism as we know it, with all its disfigurements and destructions. In Berg’s telling, the supposedly “no-alternative system” overnight collapses due to a revolution—and lo and behold, almost everyone feels better off.
Until this revolution, however, it was a long road, and the author traces it in her two preceding books, “GRM. Brainfuck” and “RCE. #RemoteCodeExecution.” Both novels are dystopias, as bleak as they can get.
They unfold in the downtrodden world of Britain’s underclass after Brexit. A group of “Trash-Kids” lives amid violence, poverty, sensory overload, and digital total surveillance. It is a bleak, mean-spirited world from which a band of hackers tries to break free. A bank hack then actually sparks the peaceful revolution.
The sunny Italy as a happy laboratory for the new beautiful world
And so begins “PNR. La Bella Vita.” In a chronicle, one of the former “Trash-Kids” lays out, in more than 90 chapters, the principles of the new European anarchist society. The chapter headings read like a charter of human rights: “No individual, and no part of the people, can claim the exercise of sovereignty,” “Digital tools serve co-determination, not surveillance,” or “Everyone has the right to a restful sleep,” and so on.
For her utopia, Berg shifts from the foggy England, the eerie backdrop of her dystopia, to sun-drenched Italy cleansed of neo-fascists, as a happy testing ground for the new beautiful world.
This world is a peculiar blend of retro idyll and audacious anarchism: in the new world there are no banks, stock exchanges, or NATO headquarters. European nations have returned to their old currencies, technology is pared down to the essential, and analog life makes a cheerful comeback. Housing is freely available, CEOs drift through life as dazed bartenders, and former multimillionaires and tech bosses are marooned on cruise ships that never dock. Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank, vanishes into a retreat in Salt Lake City.
Berg nails the punchline with entertaining, biting wit
The bright new world that Berg paints with humor, imagination, and sarcasm comes to life in lush detail and a cascade of quirky ideas. Even with its entertainment value, the novel grows a bit long-winded and repetitive over time. The predecessor books were already fairly sprawling.
It’s futile to critique “La Bella Vita” for its realism. It remains a beautiful utopia—and the idea that everyone in this world suddenly becomes pacifist, tyrants vanish without resistance, and money no longer plays a role in society stays a pleasant dream. Some of the ideas Berg develops for saving the world are less fantastical, but without a revolution or a big “bang,” as the book nicely puts it, they would probably be hard to implement.
The real strength of the novel lies in its entertaining, sharp way of pointing out the wound, denouncing the stark misdirections of the world across all fronts, and making the grim consequences painfully clear: a destroyed environment, ruined societies, and damaged minds. Sometimes utopias are needed to understand just how far our society has slipped from its moorings.
Sibylle Berg: PNR. La Bella Vita. Novel. 416 pages. Kiepenhauer&Witsch. Cologne 2025. Hardcover: $28.99. E-book: $16.99. Also available as an audiobook
