Patrick Süskind Books In Order

Novels

  1. Perfume (1976)
  2. The Pigeon (1988)
  3. The Story of Mr Sommer (1993)

Collections

  1. Ten (1996)
  2. Three Stories and a Reflection (1996)

Plays

  1. The Double-Bass (1987)

Non fiction

  1. On Love and Death (2006)

Novels Book Covers

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Patrick Süskind Books Overview

Perfume

The year is 1738; the place, Paris. A baby is born under a fish monger’s bloody table in a marketplace, and abandoned. Orphaned, passed over to the monks as a charity case, already there is something in the aura of the tiny infant that is unsettling. No one will look after him; he is somehow too demanding, and, even more disturbing, something is missing: as his wet nurse tries to explain, he doesn t smell the way a baby should smell; indeed, he has no scent at all. Slowly, as we watch Jean Baptiste Grenouille cling stubbornly to life, we begin to realize that a monster is growing before our eyes. With mounting unease, yet hypnotized, we see him explore his powers and their effect on the world around him. For this dark and sinister boy who has no smell himself possesses an absolute sense of smell, and with it he can read the world to discover the hidden truths that elude ordinary men. He can smell the very composition of objects, and their history, and where they have been, he has no need of the light, and darkness is not dark to him, because nothing can mask the odors of the universe. As he leaves childhood behind and comes to understand his terrible uniqueness, his obsession becomes the quest to identify, and then to isolate, the most perfect scent of all, the scent of life itself. At first, he hones his powers, learning the ancient arts of Perfume making until the exquisite fragrances he creates are the rage of Paris, and indeed Europe. Then, secure in his mastery of these means to an end, he withdraws into a strange and agonized solitude, waiting, dreaming, until the morning when he wakes, ready to embark on his monstrous quest: to find and extract from the most perfect living creatures the most beautiful young virgins in the land that ultimate Perfume which alone can make him, too, fully human. As his trail leads him, at an ever quickening pace, from his savage exile to the heart of the country and then back to Paris, we are caught up in a rising storm of terror and mortal sensual conquest until the frenzy of his final triumph explodes in all its horrifying consequences. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance and the haunting power of a grown up fairy tale, Perfume is one of the most remarkable novels of the last fifty years.

The Pigeon

Set in Paris and attracting comparisons with Franz Kafka and Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Pigeon‘ is Patrick Suskind’s tense, disturbing follow up to the bestselling ‘Perfume’. The novella tells the story of a day in the meticulously ordered life of bank security guard, Jonathan Noel, who has been hiding from life since his wife left him for her Tunisian lover. When Jonathan opens his front door on a day he believes will be just like any other, he encounters not the desired empty hallway but an unwelcome, diabolical intruder…
‘A psychologically plausible novel and a haunting modern day fable’ ‘Observer’.

The Story of Mr Sommer

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 boys days.

Three Stories and a Reflection

From the author of ‘Perfume’, ‘The Double Bass’ and ‘The Pigeon’, this collection of stories includes: ‘Amnesia in Litteris’, in which the author recounts how few of the books in his library he can remember; and ‘Depth Wish’, in which a promising young painter takes her notices too much to heart.

The Double-Bass

From the author of ‘Perfume’ and ‘The Pigeon’, this story revolves around the narrator’s relationship with his double bass. The play has been performed all over Germany and at the Edinburgh Festival.

On Love and Death

In On Love and Death, Patrick Suskind reveals the hidden source of his mesmerizing fiction: an obsession with the darkly erotic link between love and death. In this witty and thought provoking meditation on the two elemental forces of human existence, he brilliantly draws on scenes as contemporary as a young couple having oral sex in a traffic jam, as literary as Thomas Mann’s discovery of forbidden love at an advanced age, and as mythical as the stories of death conquered through love in the narratives of Orpheus and Jesus.

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