Perfume (novel)

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

First edition (German)
Author	Patrick Süskind
Cover artist	Antoine Watteau detail from "Nymphe et satyre", 1715-16
Country	Germany
Language	German
Genre	Horror fiction, mystery, magic realism, absurd
Publisher	Diogenes (Germany) Alfred A. Knopf (US) Hamish Hamilton (UK)
Publication date	1985
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	263 p. (UK hardback edition)
ISBN	(UK hardback edition)
OCLC	14130766

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a 1985 literary historical cross-genre novel (originally published in German as Das Parfum) by German writer Patrick Süskind. The novel explores the sense of smell and its relationship with the emotional meaning that scents may carry. It is a story of identity, communication and the morality of the human spirit.

The story centers on Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an unloved 18th-century French orphan who is born with an exceptional sense of smell, being able to distinguish a vast range of scents in the world around him. Grenouille becomes a perfumer but is drawn to murder when he encounters a young girl with an unsurpassed wondrous scent.

With translations into 48 languages and over 20 million copies sold to date worldwide, 'Perfume' is one of the largest book sales among 20th Century German novels. The title remained in bestseller lists for about 9 years, and received almost unanimously positive national and international critical acclaim. The novel was translated into English by John E. Woods and won the PEN Translation Prize in 1987.

Some editions of Perfume, including the first, have as their cover image Antoine Watteau's painting Jupiter and Antiope, which depicts a sleeping woman.

The novel is widely seen as an allegory for Hitler and his dramatic rise to power.

Grenouille (French for "frog") is born in Paris, France in 1738; his mother is almost immediately tried for previous infanticide leaving him an orphan. He is fostered but is a difficult solitary child and eventually apprenticed to a tanner. Unknown to the world around him, he has a remarkable sense of smell, and an extraordinary ability to discern odors; as a result he can perform apparently magical feats such as identifying bad vegetables by the worms they contain, or visitors as they approach the house, and can navigate in total darkness by the smell of objects around him.