Born in Rome, he taught French literature at the Università di Roma TorVergata before starting to work as a researcher in the same field. In 2000 he wrote the essay Proust antiebreo (FrancoAngeli) and started working with the literary revue Nuovi Argomenti. In 2005 his first novel The Wort Intentions (Europa), that takes inspirations from some biographical elements, became a bestseller, was translated into many languages and earned him the prizes Campiello Opera Prima and Viareggio. In 2010 Persecuzione started Il fuoco amico dei ricordi trilogy (Mondadori), then carried on by Inseparabili, that won him the premio Strega in 2012, and closed by Dove la storia finisce in 2016. As an essayist he wrote, among other works, Contro la memoria (Fandango, 2012) and Il manifesto del libero lettore: otto scrittori di cui non so fare a meno (Mondadori, 2017).