Recommendation Friday (#2)

New Friday means new recommendation! Today I want to tell you something about a good old classic, I think everyone should have read at least once. I'm talking about "Perfume: The story of a murderer" by Patrick Süskind. And yes, that's right, another german author but this time the book was translated into English and even won the PEN Translation Prize (an annual award to outstanding translations into English). I had to read it back when I was in school and I was really surprised how much I enjoyed it! Usually I never liked what we read during classes but this one was simply amazing. I loved it to pieces and even the movie was very well done.

The story takes place in France around the 18th century and focuses on Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He's a perfume apprentice with no own body scent but a very good sense of smell and is desperately trying to find the one "perfect scent" of all.

In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift: an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs.

But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and frest-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. 

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