The Emperor Of Scent
  • Published: 3 May 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099460237
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $29.99

The Emperor Of Scent

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EBook
31 Aug 2012
Paperback
3 May 2004
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Patrick Suskind's novel Perfume made real - the true history of a scientific genius with eerie powers of smell who uses his gifts to solve one of the body's last secrets: how the nose works.

In the tradition of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief and James Gleick's Genius, The Emperor of Scent tells the story of Luca Turin, an utterly unusual, stubborn scientist, his otherworldly gift for perfume, his brilliant, quixotic theory of how we smell, and his struggle to set before the world the secret of the most enigmatic of our senses.
  • Published: 3 May 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099460237
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $29.99
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About the author

Chandler Burr

Chandler Burr was born in Chicago in 1963. He has a BA in Political Studies and a Masters in International Economics and Japan Studies from the School for Advanced International Studies in Washington DC. He is the author of a cover article, 'Homosexuality and Biology', which appeared in the March 1993 issue of the Atlantic Monthly magazine and caused considerable controversy.Since December 2010 he has been curator of olfactory art at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City.

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Praise for The Emperor Of Scent

The Emperor of Scent is a gem of a book- I was mesmerised and enlightened by the many perfect asides woven into the main body of this incredible true tale.

Alexandra Fuller

With the contagious enthusiasm of a nerd given the run of a chemistry lab, he has transformed a chance meeting with a curious biophysicist named Luca Turin into an amusing and poetic adventure in science and art.

Washington Post

Ebullient- a book that celebrates the randomness and arbitrariness of discovery while also translating complex science into the colloquial- as its title indicates, The Emperor of Scent presents a larger-than-life autocrat and his interesting, engaging eccentricities-an inspired, exhilarating view of idiosyncratic science

New York Times

Fascinating and lucid- the details of Turin's work unfold like a revelation. For his part, Burr does a fine job of turning both the science and the academic jockeying around a possible publication in Nature into a pulse-racing affair.

New Yorker

A brilliant, feisty scientist at the center of a nasty, back-stabbing, utterly absorbing, cliff-hanging scramble for the Nobel Prize. The Emperor of Scent is a quirky, wonderful book.

John Berendt