Follows an odorless baby found orphaned in Paris in 1738 as he grows into a monster obsessed with his perfect sense of smell and a desire to capture, by any means, the ultimate scent that will make him human. "An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion--his sense of smell--leads to murder. In the slums of eighteenth-century...

In 1738 in Paris, a baby is born under a fishmonger's bloody table in a marketplace and abandoned. Orphaned, passed over to the monks as a charity case, already there is something about the tiny infant that is unsettling. No one will look after him; he is somehow too demanding and, even more disturbing, something is missing: he doesn't smell the way a baby should; indeed, he has no scent at all. Yet Jean-Baptiste Grenouille clings stubbornly to life,...