"For people could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving words. But they couldn't escape scent."

The story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, who was born without his own scent but with a heightened sense of smell. Set in Paris in the late 1700s, Perfume tells the tale of his search for the perfect scent.

Perfume has to be one of the most unique stories I've encountered, at times it is as equally beautiful as it is grim and disturbing. The story focuses on the life of Grenouille, right from his birth up until his later adult years. It's absolutely captivating and unique in that Suskind uses scent and smells as a way to explore so many different themes, such as power, obsession and the strong desire to obtain perfection. The character development of Grenouille is incredibly well-written, you can't help but feel sorry for him as he becomes quite a loner in his quest (he literally fucking lives under a mountain for a number of years, for gods sake!!). But then... he's also kinda creepy at times too.

Don't go into this book expecting a fast-paced murder-mystery thriller - oh no, this book is so much more subtle in its execution. The story travels along at a relatively slow pace, but you will NEED to know what happens next as events unfold. Perfume reads like a classic, but without being incredibly verbose or dense. The writing is simply beautiful, one of those books where you feel like you want to constantly highlight every section.

The scientist in me was geeking out majorly over the different processes described in the production of perfumes, such as distillation etc. I am also a huge fan of perfumes in general, so I did find it really interesting to learn more about the process. How do you capture a scent? How do you bottle that scent? Those parts were really enjoyable to read.

That ending though... WHAT THE HECK WAS I READING? It was fucking off the wall! It felt like it came out of nowhere and initially I wasn't really on board... but when I thought about it and certain explanations were given I wasn't only on board, I was steering the goddamn ship! That ending is pretty crazy but makes perfect sense within the story.

Overall I highly recommend Perfume, particularly if you are looking for something a little different, a little dark, and a completely unique reading experience.

4 stars.

n  n   

In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages.

n  n So begins this tale of the life and misadventures of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Jean-Basptiste was born with no smell, but he has an elevated gift of the olfactory inclination. n  

“And there you have it! That is a clear sign. If he were possessed by the devil, then he would have to stink.”

n So gifted was he, in fact, that he could smell people coming from a distance away and his warder believed Jean-Baptiste to be psychic. Honestly, with the fates he could accomplish, I'm surprised he wasn't supernatural.

Jean-Baptiste is sold to a tanner at the age of 11 where he perfects his gift of scent. A lot happens that gets lost in all the mire I was enduring just to get to the murders. At this point, he kills one young virgin girl to preserve her scent forever. Then, he does nothing for years until he goes to work at a perfumery.

While there, he is basically a Gary Stu of the perfume makers. An inexperienced savant who can somehow concoct the perfect perfume, measurements and all, just by his fucking nose. Lord, spare me. I found this book interesting at first. If inappropriately funny. It's very immersive. I can't speak to its accuracy regarding 18th century France but unlike that heaping pile of shit Addie LaRue, I actually felt like I was in 18th century France. But what this book likes to tell you is that Jean-Baptiste has a gifted nose. He also had a supernatural power of healing.

n  In the course of his childhood he survived the measles, dysentery, chicken pox, cholera, a twenty-foot fall into a well, and a scalding with boiling water poured over his chest.n

The book tries to say that he survives all his maladies through spite and malice. Lol ok.

I don't really know what to make of this book. It's infuriating because it felt like there was so much more hiding under the surface. It seemed to promise me the disgusting pleasure of popping a ripe pimple but really it was an itch that disappeared. We spend so much time following Jean-Baptiste trying to recreate the scents of innocuous objects like brass doorknobs or maggots. The whole time I had to keep asking myself, where are all the murders.

After he spends 7 years without proper food and water, subsisting on drops from a wet rock, moss, frogs and lizards, Jean Bapstiste rejoins civilisation to dandy around with some charlatan who was selling a bogus treatment. By this stage I was just annoyed. Jean does start a string of murders where he is leading up to his ultimate prize. The most beautiful Laure. A virginal beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant who was virginal and beautiful. It is all we know about her. The book won't let you forget. The narrator, the girl's father, Jean-Baptiste won't fucking shut up about how she's such a beautiful fucking virgin. And oh my god, I was ready to tear my hair out.

The book also fails to follow Jean-Baptiste when he killed 24 girls to practise how to capture their scents and perfect how he'll get Laure's scent. No, we had to be with him in a cave when he would blow his wad because he had a wet dream about the first girl he killed. We had to follow him when he was trying to recreate the scents of inconsequential items like wood or coins. We had to follow him when he clubbed a puppy to death. But when he's actually terrorising the residents of a remote French village, literally the most interesting part of the story, we get fleeting accounts from the villagers.

The final conflict is so lackluster, it makes you wonder if Suskind had ran out of cocaine when he was writing it. The prose is lazy, the suspense dead, and the ending meaningless. This may be the worst book about a serial killer I've ever read which is funny because it damn near sapped me of my will to live.

Este libro es una experiencia sensorial olfativa, el libro no se lee sino se huele, se aspira y se exhala

Es un clásico situando en Francia del siglo XVIII descrita como un lugar desagradable, apestoso, caótico, nauseabundo y en medio de todo nace esto Grenouille, nuestro protagonista, en un mercado lleno de pescado y fruta podrida es abandonado por su madre al nacer y tiene que aprender a sobrevivir a muchas pruebas a lo largo de la historia

Lo interesante de este personaje es que tiene la capacidad de oler TODO, el aire, el vidrio, el mar, las flores, TODO, completamente todo pero él mismo no tiene olor alguno. No huele a absolutamente nada.

Debo decir que esta es una historia que no se concentra en el desarrollo de personajes, sino, en la historia misma y como dije, más que nada en darnos una experiencia sensorial como pocos libros pueden hacer. Sin embargo, Grenouille, es un personaje que no se olvida, es un genio calculador que puede lograr mediante la creación de perfumes hechos con los más extraños ingredientes, engañar a cualquier persona y someterla como el quiera.

Es un personaje narciso, malvado, lleno de odio por la humanidad y su único interés en la vida es crear el perfume perfecto.

Esta es la historia de uno de los hombres más geniales y abominables de los que he tenido la suerte de leer, un libro oscuro y retorcido como ninguno y con uno de los mejores finales de la historia.

(Book 243 from 1001 books) - Das Parfum. Die Geschichte eines Mörders, Patrick Süskind = ‎‬Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Patrick Suskind

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a 1985 literary historical fantasy novel (published originally 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 have.

The story mainly concerns Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (French for "frog"), 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 becomes interested in murder when he encounters a young girl with an unsurpassed wondrous scent.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «عطر: سرگذشت یک جنایتکار»؛ «عطر»؛ نویسنده: پاتریک سوسکیند (زوسکیند)؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش نسخه فارسی روز بیست و دوم از ماه سپتامبر سال2002میلادی

عنوان: عطر: سرگذشت یک جنایتکار؛ اثر: پاتریک سوسکیند (زوسکیند)؛ ترجمه مهدی سمسار؛ نشر مهدی سمسار، سال1372، در311 ص؛ شابک ایکس-964875818؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان آلمان - سده20م

عنوان: عطر؛ اثر: پاتریک سوسکیند (زوسکیند)؛ مترجم: رویا منجم؛ نشر تهران، نگاه سبز، سال1379، در272ص، شابک9645639115؛

عطر: قصه یک آدمکش، رمانی است که «پاتریک زوسکیند» نویسنده «آلمانی» آن را در سال1985میلادی منتشر کرده‌ است؛ در زاغه های «فرانسه»ی سده ی هجدهم میلادی، نوزادی به نام «ژان بپتیست گرنویی» با استعدادی ناباورانه، به دنیا میآید؛ او حس بویایی بی نهایت قدرتمندی دارد، و تشخیص بوهای مختلف حتی از راه دور، برای او کاری بسیار ساده است؛ او در کودکی، وقت خود را صرف رمزگشایی بوهای مختلف «پاریس» میکند، و شاگرد عطاری، برجسته میشود، که به «ژان»، هنر کهن ترکیب عطرها، و گیاهان ارزشمند را آموزش میدهد؛ اما کار در یک مغازه ی عطرفروشی، اصلاً برای نبوغ «گرنویی» کافی نیست؛ «ژان بپتیست» در یک روز به رایحه ای برمیخورد، که او را وادار میسازد زندگی خود را صرف خلق «عطر غایی» کند؛ رمان «عطر سرگذشت یک جنایتکار»، با ارائه ی داستانی درخشان، و حیرت انگیز، بدون شک یکی از برترین آثار ادبی چند دهه ی اخیر است؛ این کتاب به چهل و پنج زبان ترجمه شده، و بیش از پانزده میلیون جلد از آن در جهان به فروش رفته‌ است؛ براساس داستان همین کتاب، در سال2006میلادی نیز فیلم «قصه یک آدمکش»؛ به کارگردانی «تام تیکور» ساخته شده است

نقل از متن: (در فرانسه ی سده ی هجدهم میلادی، مردی میزیست که یکی از بااستعدادترین و پلیدترین شخصیتهای عصری بود، که شخصیتهای با استعداد و پلید کم نداشت.)؛ پایان نقل از متن کتاب؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 14/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 11/09/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

"hay en el perfume una fuerza de persuasión más fuerte que las palabras, el destello de las miradas, los sentimientos y la voluntad. La fuerza de persuasión del perfume no se puede contrarrestar, nos invade como el aire invade nuestros pulmones, nos llena, nos satura, no existe ningún remedio contra ella".

خلصتهاااا :)

قريتها ببطء شديد متعمد .... كنت مستمتعة بتفصيلات ممكن تبان غريبة لبعض الناس وخيالي بيسرح في حاجات أغرب ... بس النهاردة مقدرتش ابطأ نفسي في القراية ... كان لازم أخلصها وتقريبا أكلت صفحاتها بعيني ومن غير ما أفوت كلمة واحدة

ودلوقتي حاسة بإحساس غريب يتلخص في كلمة واحدة هي "واااو"
Woooow
:D

منين جاب الفكرة دي؟؟!! والتفصيلات العجيبة والنهاية الغريبة دي؟؟!! أي شيطان كان بيتنطط في خيال الكاتب وإداله الفكرة

لازم أعترف إن للرواية مغزى أخلاقي من وجهة نظري فـ "چان بابتيست جرينوي" كان نتاج المعاملة اللي تلقاها والظروف المحيطة بيه من معتقدات سخيفة لناس بسيطة ومعاملة سيئة في أغلب الوقت وإن تحسنت المعاملة بيكون لسبب وهو المنفعة الشخصية من موهبته مع النفور التام من شخصه وأكيد دة بيسبب تشوه نفسي لأي حد فما بال الكل بطفل بيكبر بدون حب واهتمام حقيقيين؟؟

باتريك زوسكند كان هايل في إنه أوجد فيا إحساس التعاطف مع جرينوي كطفل رضيع وفي أول سنوات حياته وحتى مع أول جرائمه لأنه كان طفل بوعي ديني وأخلاقي أقل من الطبيعي واعتقد بشدة إن الوعي دة بيتم اكتسا��ه من التربية في عائلة محترمة .... وبعدها لقيتني مترقبة جدا لنجاحاته .... مرعوبة من جموحه وأفكاره وجرائمه التالية ومتعاطفة من جديد موقفه مع نفسه في الآخر

وصعب عليا جدا والد لور ... قطع قلبي

من الحاجات اللي سرحت فيها إنه فكرني بقطتي اللي طول النهار بتشمشم في اي حاجة جديدة تيجي في سكتها :)

وسرحت في إزاي لما كنت باشتري عطور من المطارات والمحلات في الأماكن اللي سافرت لها كانوا بيجربوها بالرش على ورقة مستطيلة ويهزوها في الجو قبل ما يناولوهالي ... بينما هنا في مصر البياعة بترش لي على رسغ إيدي وتقول لي ماتشميهاش دلوقتي واستني لما تهدا ... وبصراحة بحب الطريقة التانية اكتر وبتخليني احدد اللي عايزاه بشكل أدق وفهمت من الرواية سر الطريقتين في تجربة العطور

سرحت في مكونات العطور اللي ذكرها الكاتب وترجمها المترجم بمعظم الأسماء الأغرب والأقل شيوعا، واللي عندي فكرة عن اغلبها بسبب دخولها في بعض العطور اللي استخدمتها في حياتي واستخدمها زوجي واللي أعرف تماما معنى تواجدها في العطر وهل هيبقى تقيل للمساء ولا خفيف للنهار ... وافتكرت النصيحة الجامدة جدا " وانتوا بتعملوا انترفيو شغل وحياتكوا ماتعموا الناس ببرفانكم لأنه لو معجبهمش ممكن يأثر على تقييمهم لكم" :))

سرحت في إني بحب ريحة البحر وإن كنت - بعد تفكير- وصلت لفكرة إني ماحبش الإحتفاظ بيها وأحب أشتاق لها :)) وبحب ريحة البن في المحمصة والحبهان في مطبخي واللب الأسمر السخن والكتب .... وبحب ريحة المواليد فعلا ... بحب ريحة مخدة واحد من ولادي (ابني الكبير) وساعات بابدل معاه مخدتي لو أنا مش عيانة عشان دة بيحسسني بسلام نفسي وساعات هو بيكتشف ده ويبوظ التخطيط :)) وباكره بعض روائح لجمادات ونوع من الخضار المطبوخ وفعلا مابطبخهوش

سرحت في إن يا ترى لو كان فيه حد كدة فعلا كان هيعرف يعيش لحد سن جرينوي ولا استقباله للروائح بخاصة الخبيث منها كان ممكن يجننه ويمرضه؟؟

رواية مجنونة وجننتني ومختلفة فعلا عن كل حاجة قريتها أو يمكن اقراها مستقبلا
:))

ترجمة كاميران حوج بشعة ومحتاجة ترجمة أساسا بس تجاهلتها أحيانا وتقبلتها أحيانا كنوع من التغيير وطبعا لم تقلل من تقييمي للرواية

What begins with one of the most alluring opening lines soon spirals into a gorgeously twisted tale of death and strangeness, written and translated with staggering beauty. Perfume tells the tale of the 18th century French orphan Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, who slipped from his mother while she worked at a fish market and then promptly died. And while his beginnings are bleak, he soon grows into an unusual kind of monster.

Grenouille has the uncanny ability to identify smells from miles away. His nose is unnaturally attuned, and he will eventually kill for the smells he desires most. We watch him grow up, become apprentice to a perfumer in Paris, and eventually leave when he grows tired of other people. But the smells of certain women drive him to commit terrible crimes in this blend of historical fiction and poetic fantasy.

Perfume is a grotesque novel about the intersection between death and obsession, as well as the corruption of power and dominance. An unsavoury yet addictive work that proves to be an entirely compulsive read.

My full thoughts: https://booksandbao.com/best-historic...

This book is a gripping tale of an olfactory genius: a youth with an extraordinary sense of smell, transforming it from a perfectly tuned instrument of perception to a source of inspired creativity and intellectual delight. Physically unattractive and paradoxically odorless, Jean-Baptiste was doomed to grow as an outcast from birth. This fact allowed him to nurture his two greatest passions, the search and collection of new scents and the gradually increasing aversion from humanity. The conflict between the two turns him into a ruthless monster. The protagonist unconditionally sweeps off all moral barriers in the way of his goal to create a divine perfume that would subjugate the world. The final result is as destructive as it is self-destructive. Patrick Suskind's classic novel vividly portrays the temptations and dangers of extreme isolation and self-aggrandizement - and it is both a guide and a warning.

كل ما في الرواية خارج عن المألوف

لا أدري ماذا سيقول أصحاب مقولة " اتبع شغفك " بعد قراءة هذه الرواية

هل سيستمرون بنصحنا أن نتبع شغفنا حتى لو كان في النهاية أن نسلخ رأس الجميلات ههه !!

I was predisposed to love this book no matter what. I love perfumes. The fact that this book had blood and murder was just a bonus.

For me, perfumes and scents are a visceral thing. I love perfume. I have never been a visual person, my memories are composed of layers of scent.

I remember as a child, growing up in Vietnam, visiting my elderly neighbor's house and having him give me a cup of black tea infused with jasmine. Those jasmines would put the pitiful little star jasmines to shame. They were huge, each petal as wide as a fingernail. White, waxen, and filled with the most beautiful, deep, richly floral scent that even as a 5-year old I could feel was seductive without ever knowing the meaning or the existence of the word.

I remember sleeping with the window open, as the night air was filled with the scents of the flowering trees that grew outside my grandparents' house. I remember the green, earthy smell of the rice paddies where I grew up. I remember the bitter, smoky smell of the pits (so environmentally destructive, but whatever) that my neighbors dug in which they burned wood slowly for months to make a small supply of coal. Not all the smells were pleasant, of course, because hello, I did grow up on a farm, but my memories are built upon scent.

My love of perfume grew when I was a teen. I learned about perfumes, and how they were made. I learned about how flowers were distilled for their scents, an enormous quantity of raw ingredients required for a few precious drops of essential oils. I learned about making aromatic compounds in an organic chemistry lab, and that my beloved scent of jasmine (and tuberose) smelled as beautifully seductive and sexual as it did because it contained a compound called indoles, which smells like poop. Who knew!

I learned that each perfume as a top note, which quickly dissipates, the middle notes, which remains, the base notes, which lingers onto your skin like the touch of a long-gone lover. I learned that musk can smell rank, like sweaty, animalistic sex on top of a slice of Muenster cheese, or it can smell like the warmth of a mother's embrace.

There are certain scents I will never be able to wear again, because one I wore for months, while longing after a guy I thought I could never have. Another I can't smell without wincing, because it reminds me of heartbreak and tears, despite the fact that it came in a rose-colored bottle and smelled like green tea and lemons.

This book is a perfume lover's dream come true. The entire book could have had no mystery at all, and I would still read it and revel in the descriptions alone.

The Summary: Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was a bastard, born in 1738 to a syphilitic, consumptive woman working in a stinking fish stall as a gutter. After delivering the unfortunate child, she was promptly arrested for abandoning said child, and hanged.

A most auspicious beginning.

Even in the beginning, his wet nurse---paid for by the state---noticed that something was wrong with Grenouille.

n  “I don’t mean what’s in the diaper. His soil smells, that’s true enough. But it’s the bastard himself, he doesn’t smell.”n

Babies have a smell, some stink, but underneath it, there's always a warm, cuddly smell that even a cold, heartless, child-hating woman such as I can appreciate. Grenouille has no scent.

People notice. His fellow children notice.

n  They could not stand the nonsmell of him. They were afraid of him.n

As a teen, he sought work at a tannery in Paris. Paris is a stinking pit of hell. To Grenouille...it is heaven, with its amalgamation of scents.

n  It was a mixture of human and animal smells, of water and stone and ashes and leather, of soap and fresh-baked bread and eggs boiled in vinegar, of noodles and smoothly polished brass, of sage and ale and tears, of grease and soggy straw and dry straw. Thousands upon thousands of odors formed an invisible gruel that filled the street ravines, only seldom evaporating above the rooftops and never from the ground below.n

Grenouille knew he was not normal, but his obsession for the pursuit of a scent never really gained traction until he committed his first murder, for love of a virgin's scent.

n  ...the sweat of her armpits, the oil in her hair, the fishy odor of her genitals, and smelled it all with the greatest pleasure. Her sweat smelled as fresh as the sea breeze, the tallow of her hair as sweet as nut oil, her genitals were as fragrant as the bouquet of water lilies, her skin as apricot blossoms... and the harmony of all these components yielded a perfume so rich, so balanced, so magical, that every perfume that Grenouille had smelled until now, every edifice of odors that he had so playfully created within himself, seemed at once to be utterly meaningless.n

The scent of a living human being that he must commit to memory, that he must capture, in the way a flower collector dries a specimen within parchment, in the way an insect lover kills and pins to a page the very thing he loves.

n  When she was dead he laid her on the ground among the plum pits, tore off her dress, and the stream of scent became a flood that inundated him with its fragrance. He thrust his face to her skin and swept his flared nostrils across her, from belly to breast, to neck, over her face and hair, and back to her belly, down to her genitals, to her thighs and white legs. He smelled her over from head to toe, he gathered up the last fragments of her scent under her chin, in her navel, and in the wrinkles inside her elbow.n

His is an obsessive quest that will lead him to murder again, and again, and again, in this desperate search.

n  Grenouille knew for certain that unless he possessed this scent, his life would have no meaning.n

This is a book in which the title is completely self-explanatory. It is about a murderer, and his obsessive quest for a perfect perfume. It's something I understand, in my constant search for the Holy Grail of fragrances.

But I have yet to succumb to the urge to murder. >_>

Needless to say, this book will not be everyone's cup of tea; but it takes a particularly talented writer to make you pity and sympathize with a murderer, and Süskind just happens to be that kind of writer. I remember when I first read this books years ago, the finishing paragraph left me breathless, and as I placed the book down the first thing that came across my mind was, "What the hell did I just read?" However once you understand the unique motivation behind the protagonist's cruel art-form, you might love or hate him, but I guarantee this book will make you feel something.

أسرتني هذه الرواية الغريبة العجيبة التي تُحفّز عقل القارئ ليُبصر ويستنشق حروف الرواية بأنفهِ، فيجنح بخيالهِ مع شخوص الرواية ليقرأ قصة منتنة، شيقة، مرعبة ـ تحفة أدبية نادرة.