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.

An essay on the two mysterious, elemental forces of human existence – love and death. Undying love and its perpetual adversary, death, are the themes of Patrick Süskind's provocative essay. Drawing on pertinent examples from philosophy and literature (from Plato to Kleist and Thomas Mann) as well as from modern life, Süskind's subtle yet amusing prose reveals the heavenly – but also hellish – force that is love. And he compares the destinies of Jesus and Orpheus, two men who tried to conquer death through love.

Normally the double-basses are assimilated, concealed in the orchestra. Scored both as a social comedy and a lament to the essential unfairness of life, ›The Double Bass‹ restores a grain of justice to a too long-ignored area of artistic endeavour, allowing one double-bass player at least to perform in this book.

»Beware the pronouncements of the critic« is the warning message of ›Depth Wish‹ in which a promising young painter takes her notices catastrophically to heart. In ›A Battle‹ bystanders want a nonchalant, elegantly dressed challenger to beat their ugly little local chess matador who has doggedly defeated them over the years, but what exactly is the newcomer up to with his breathtaking Napoleonic flair at the chessboard? In ›Maître Mussard's Bequest‹ a man develops a world view that renders him all too soon - and all too literally - petrified. In ›Amnesia in Litteris‹, Patrick Suskind's hilarious and compelling concluding piece, the author recounts a great forgetting as he browses through his own well-loved library and discovers how few of the books can actually remember. In this exquisite collection, Patrick Suskind's genius for unmasking self-deception and dramatising human obsession is once again beautifully demonstrated.