Pilar Giralt Gorina Books

Patrick Süskind'in, Almanya'da ilk yayımlanışında tam anlamıyla olay yaratan, aylarca liste başlarında kalan Koku adlı bu romanı, gerçekte alışılagelmiş çoksatarların oldukça dışında kalan, tarihsel boyutlarda kapsamlı bir toplum eleştirisini sergileyen bir kitap. Olay, 18. yüzyıl Fransa'sında geçer; kitabın kahramanı Jean-Baptiste Grenouille ise tüm insani duyumlardan ve duygulardan yoksun, salt kokulara karşı görülmedik ölçüde duyarlı ve istediği kokuları üretebilmek için cinayet işlemekten kesinlikle çekinmeyen bir katildir. Herkesin ve her şeyin kokusunu almakta, tüm kokuları üretmekte gerçek bir dâhi olan Grenouille, kendi kokusunun bulunmadığını, onun bulunduğu yerlerde insanların insan kokusunu alamadıklarını anladığı gün, dünyasını da yitirir. Kendisi için tek çıkar yol, başkalarına onun için sanki insanmış izlenimini verebilecek kokular sürünmektir. Toplum içinde bireyselliğini hiçbir zaman edinememiş toplum tekini, kendi benliğinin dışında her şeyi yaratabilmiş dâhiyi sergileyen bu görkemli alegorinin olağanüstü bir akıcılıkla erişilen son bölümü, benzeri herhalde ancak bir Kafka'da görülebilecek bir insanlık trajedisinin simgesidir.

Marie 'Missie' Vassiltchikov as a White Russian emigree caught with her family in Hitler's Germany at the outbreak of the war. She was part of the cosmopolitan set who managed to maintain a trance-like normality until as late as 1941. Before long, however, Missie became sickened by the nature of Nazi-rule.

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 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. Told with dazzling narrative brillance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity. Translated from the German by John E. Woods.

In a terrifying trip across America, young Jack Sawyer is searching for the Talisman, the only thing that can save his dying mother. His quest takes him into the menacing Territories where violence, surprise and the titanic struggle between good and evil reach across a mythic landscape.

A magnificent example of Widmer's characteristic humor, literary genius, and unparalleled imagination. In the wildly entertaining novel The Blue Soda Siphon, the narrator unexpectedly finds himself back in the world of his childhood: Switzerland in the 1940s. He returns to his childhood home to find his parents frantic because their son is missing. Then, in another switch, the young boy that he was back then turns up in the present of the early 1990s, during the Gulf War, where he meets himself as an older man, and meets his adult self's young daughter. These head-scratching, hilarious time shifts happen when both the adult narrator and his childhood self go to the cinema and see films, the subjects of which echo their own lives. Translated into English for the first time by Donal McLaughlin, this novel, in which the eponymous blue soda siphon bottle is a recurring symbol, is a magnificent example of Urs Widmer's characteristic humor, literary genius, and unparalleled imagination.