Nrº 32 - Three Readings on the World of Perfume

What could be better than indulging in reading, holding a good book in your hands and letting your mind wander?

If the pages then take us back to the world of perfume, the pleasure is double, combining the intellectual and sensory spheres.

Here then are some novels about perfumes, to let your thoughts dream on distant notes.

The Perfume, Patrick Süskind

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille lived in France in the 18th century. Born on 17 July 1783, he was one of the most ingenious and villainous figures in the realm of scents; rejected at birth by his mother and nannies because he did not have the smell that newborns should have, he managed to survive and, as he grew older, discovered that he possessed a prodigious ability to perceive and distinguish odours.

He then decided to become the world's greatest perfumer, and we follow him on his journey through the ateliers, an apprentice who quickly surpassed his masters by moving from Paris to Grasse, the city of perfumers in beautiful Provence.

His goal is not to get rich, or to know glory, but to follow his mad dream of dominating the hearts of men, creating a perfume capable of generating love in anyone who smells it, and to achieve this, he will stop at nothing.

Perfume of Ice, Yoko Ogawa

A short novel: a journalist investigates the disappearance of her partner, a perfume creator, based on cryptic phrases she found and through the last perfume he created especially for her, Fountain of Memory.

Thus begins a journey through time, from the boy's birthplace to Prague, to put the pieces of a mysterious puzzle together.

Yoko Ogawa involves her characters in a universe of mysterious ties, where destinies are already written in their names.

Perfumes. A sentimental inventory of the odours of a life, Philippe Claudel

A novel that is an olfactory puzzle made up of 63 pieces that, in alphabetical order, recompose an existence through the smells and fragrances of an entire life in a whirlwind of emotions and experiences that start from their singularity to become incredibly universal.

Written by Adele