Most of us need only compare our nose to other people's to see that ours is no better or worse than most. But if you really do have a challenging honker, bury it in Patrick Süskind's ode to the greatest nose in fiction, that of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Your nose may not be your most winning feature, but an educated nose can enrich your life and, eventually, earn you love.
Smells reign supreme in this rapturous novel. For in 18th-century Paris, the streets heave with a noxious mix of urine, rotting melon and disease. Here, on the hottest day of the year, his mother squatting among the guts of descaled fish, the young Grenouille is born – and immediately given away. For this sinister baby has no smell of his own, and his own puggish nose quivers perpetually as if able to sniff out one's private thoughts.