Product Description

Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets of Paris as a child, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Soon, he is creating the most sublime fragrances in all the city. Yet there is one odor he cannot capture. It is exquisite, magical: the scent of a young virgin. And to get it he must kill. And kill. And kill.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6148 in Books
• Published on: 1987
• Original language: German
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
An unforgettable account of the possessor of a fine nose and a murderous heart. The reek of 18th-century Paris comes right off the page as Suskind unravels his unpleasant tale with relish. (Kirkus UK)

From a West German playwright: an elaborate historical fable about smell, set in 18th-century France - obsessive, showy, heavily (if rather murkily) metaphorical, with a fair amount of black-comic dazzle but only a glimmer or two of genuine narrative magic. Suskind's monster - hero is Jean. Baptise Grenouille, born in stench-ridden Paris in 1738, an instant orphan (his fishwife-mother is beheaded for multiple infanticide), rejected by society, barely allowed to live. But, though ugly, deformed, and hateful, Grenouille has been born with a double-miracle when it comes to odor: he himself is odorless. . .and he has super-powers of smell for the odors around him! And soon, inspired by the glorious aroma of a luscious maiden (whom he kills), young Grenouille vows to become history's greatest perfumer, to "revolutionize the odoriferous world." He becomes the apprentice to a leading Parisian perfumer, quickly outdoing his master; he manically absorbs every smell-extracting technique, nearly dying of a broken heart when he fails to distill scent from glass, leather, or gravel. Then he spends seven years in glorious egomaniacal isolation, a godlike hermit in a mountain cave, free of human smells around him. But an olfactory identity-crisis - he's aware of, but can't quite smell, his own body odor - sends Grenouille back into society, now determined to concoct an artificial substitute for human scent. Eventually his obsession leads him to kill two-dozen lovely virgins, extracting a super-scent front their hair, clothes, etc. And though this ultimate perfume enables Grenouille to escape the guillotine (it makes him a demigod and drives the masses into orgiastic frenzies), he's nonetheless driven to suicide-by-cannibalism: "If he could not smell himself and thus never know who he was, to hell with it, with the world, with himself, with his perfume." In John Woods' stylish translation, Suskind's central premise has strong resonance at the start. At book length, however, the notion wears thin; the nature of Grenouille's paradox, with its thematic subtext (smell as human-ness, as self-knowledge, etc.), becomes both repetitious and inconsistent. And Suskind's storytelling, short on memorable supporting players, lacks the Candide-like brio needed to sustain involvement in such an arch and stagy (if frequently impressive) exercise. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Patrick Suskind was born near Munich, in 1949. He studied medieval and modern history at the University of Munich. His first play, The Double Bass, was written in 1980 and became an international success. His first novel, Perfume became an internationally acclaimed bestseller. He is also the author of The Pigeon and Mr. Summer's Story, and a coauthor of the enormously successful German television series Kir Royal. Patrick Suskind lives and writes in Munich.