This book was originally written in German and has been translated into English. It is set in France in the eighteenth-century.
The story follows the life of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. It begins with his birth and the arrest and decapitation of his mother. Grenouille is at first looked after by wet nurses and then placed in a house by the church to be cared for by Madame Gaillard. He stays there for a number of years until the church fail to pay for his care. Everyone who has looked after Grenouille has felt there was something odd about the boy, even as a small baby he had no smell.
Although he has no personal body odour himself, Grenouille has a very acute sense of smell and, even if he does not know what it is that he is smelling, he remembers and can identify every single smell he has known.
Tracking down and chasing smells leads Grenouille into different jobs and ultimately to committing murder.
This is a really unusual story in a gothic style.
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