Prior to and during the Olympic Games, vehicle access will be restricted in Paris, so orders may take longer than usual to process.
Could this summer be about reading the story of a murderer with an excellent sense of smell ? Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is a bit of an unusual guy that knows no sense of right and wrong but can make excellent perfumes, using everything and everyone, literally. Hence, if you want to read a book that deals with deep topics such as love, hatred or death but through the eyes of a character incapable of feeling anything then, it’s the perfect summer read.Patrick Süskind can write beautifully about flowers, distillation and stunning landscapes but can also describe filth, disgust and vice perfectly, while maintaining a healthy dose of irony that highlights the absurdity of it all.
An erotic masterpiece of twentieth century fiction - a tale of sensual obsession and bloodlust in eighteenth century Paris
'An astonishing tour de force both in concept and execution' Guardian
In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages. His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, and if his name has been forgotten today.
It is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance, misanthropy, immorality, or, more succinctly, wickedness, but because his gifts and his sole ambition were restricted to a domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of scent . . .
'A fantastic tale of murder and twisted eroticism controlled by a disgusted loathing of humanity . .. Clever, stylish, absorbing and well worth reading' Literary Review
'A meditation on the nature of death, desire and decay . . . A remarkable début' Peter Ackroyd, The New York Times Book Review
'Unlike anything else one has read. A phenomenon . . . [It] will remain unique in contemporary literature' Figaro
'An ingenious and totally absorbing fantasy' Daily Telegraph
'Witty, stylish and ferociously absorbing' Observer
