Recommendations
Books Like Perfume
Eight novels of obsessive genius, sensory experience, and the aesthetics of evil
Süskind's novel of olfactory genius and murder recommends fiction that examines how extraordinary talent becomes monstrosity, explores the relationship between aesthetic obsession and violence, and inhabits the minds of characters who exist entirely outside conventional morality.
- 1Buy
Like Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel
Tita's emotions pass into her cooking — the magical realist novel that shares Perfume's central conceit of a person who can affect others through a sensory medium (taste/smell); where Grenouille uses his gift for murder, Tita uses hers for love, and the contrast illuminates both novels; Esquivel's magic is warm and domestic where Süskind's is cold and predatory, but both books are fundamentally about the relationship between sensory genius and power over others
- 2Buy
Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
Humbert Humbert's confession of his obsession with Dolores Haze — the most formally accomplished novel about a monster who is also an aesthete; like Perfume, Lolita forces the reader inside a consciousness that is morally unacceptable through the sheer seductiveness of its prose style; both Nabokov and Süskind give their murderers voices so compellingly beautiful that the reader must constantly fight the pleasure of the narrative to remember what it is about
- 3Buy
American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis
Patrick Bateman, a Wall Street investment banker who may be a serial killer, narrates his life in meticulous brand-cataloguing detail — Ellis's novel shares Perfume's project of inhabiting a murderous consciousness from the inside; where Süskind's Grenouille is driven by a specific aesthetic obsession (scent), Ellis's Bateman is driven by status and consumer desire; both novels use their protagonists' obsessions as lenses for examining broader cultural pathologies
- 4Buy
The Talented Mr. Ripley
by Patricia Highsmith
Tom Ripley kills his way into the life he desires — Highsmith's novel shares Perfume's core premise of a person who lacks something ordinary people have (in Ripley's case, identity and social standing; in Grenouille's, personal scent) and who compensates for this lack through murder; both protagonists are presented with a kind of cold sympathy that makes the reader uncomfortably complicit in their crimes
- 5Buy
The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco
William of Baskerville investigates a series of murders in a fourteenth-century Italian monastery — Eco's historical detective novel shares Perfume's eighteenth-century atmosphere and its examination of how obsession with a single category of knowledge (in Eco's case, a lost Aristotle text; in Süskind's, scent) can drive people to extremity; both are richly researched historical fictions in which the specific period setting is inseparable from the theme
- 6Buy
The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
Dorian Gray, whose portrait ages while he remains young, descends into corruption and murder — Wilde's novel is the most direct precursor to Perfume in its examination of aesthetic beauty as a force that corrupts; both novels are fundamentally about what happens when the pursuit of beauty is detached from morality; Grenouille and Dorian are mirror images: one pursuing the scent of beauty, the other preserved by it, both destroyed by their relationship to it
- 7Buy
Silence of the Lambs
by Thomas Harris
Clarice Starling seeks Hannibal Lecter's help to catch another serial killer — Harris's novel is the most widely read contemporary treatment of the murderous genius that Perfume also examines; where Süskind makes Grenouille's consciousness entirely internal and private, Harris makes Lecter's operate through performance and dialogue; both killers are presented as aesthetes who have made art out of murder
- 8Buy
The Collector
by John Fowles
Frederick Clegg, a lonely bank clerk who wins the football pools, kidnaps the art student Miranda Grey and keeps her in his basement — Fowles's novel is the British literary thriller most structurally parallel to Perfume: a man who lacks something ordinary people have (social connection, aesthetic sensibility) who compensates by possessing someone who embodies what he cannot feel; the alternating perspectives of collector and captive show the same event from inside and outside the obsession
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