Perfume is a long-lasting international success story: Originally published in 1985 and translated into over 50 languages, the book has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. In Germany, the book spent 9 years on the Spiegel bestseller list. The movie adaptation of 2006 was one of the 15 most successful in German cinema history, with 5.6 million box office viewers in Germany alone.

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born in eighteenth-century Paris and abandoned on the streets, discovers that he has an extraordinary – almost superhuman – sense of smell, he inherited from his mother. As he sniffs his way across France, this gift is exploited by Grenouille to create the world’s most marvellous perfumes. Yet in seeking perfection in his experiments, he realises that a vital ingredient is missing for the perfect scent: innocence. In order to get the ingredient he needs, he must capture it – whatever the cost.

A boy’s village childhood with all the traditional attributes – father, mother, brother, sister, a house on a lake, tree-climbing, going to the races, music lessons, a bicycle, a crush on a girl in the class – is bedevilled by the mystifying appearances of the eccentric Mr Sommer. Moving through the landscape in silent haste, like a man possessed, with his empty rucksack and his long, odd-looking walking stick, Mr Sommer runs like a black thread through the boy’s days. Sempe’s light, caricatural illustrations perfectly capture both the humour and the gravity of Süskind’s tale.

A classical short novella.

Taken from the previously published story collection Three Stories and a Reflection, now in a new edition with wonderful illustrations by Jean-Jacques Sempé.

Two men are seated across a chess board in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. One is an ingenious upstart, the other an old champion caught in his old ways.
It’s time for the apéritif, but none of the onlookers would even think of leaving the scene.
Who is the audience’s favourite? And which king will fall first?

In five months' time the guard of a Parisian bank who has come to understand that the only purpose of his job is to open the door of the director's car, will finally have fully paid off his little garret thus marking the completion of yet another chapter of his life plan. But this fatalistic course of events is abruptly called into question by a pigeon which unexpectedly appears on a hot Friday morning in August 1984.