The Emperor of Scent : A Story of Perfume@@ Obsession and the Last Mystery of the Senses - Softcover

Chandler Burr

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099460238 ISBN 13: 9780099460237

Publisher: Random House, 2004

Synopsis

Luca Turin was born with an uncannily powerful nose, able to distinguish the components of any scent, from the world's most refined perfumes to the air on the New York subways. A scientist, he kept his powers to himself, concentrating on other fields. But when, for the love of it, he began to write reviews of fragrances, and those reviews took the world by storm, everything changed. The secret world of scent creation opened up, and Turin discovered something astonishing: No one understands how our noses work. Billions and billions of dollars are spent creating the scents all around us in a manner that amounts to a glorified trial and error. The solution to the mystery of every other human sense had led to a Nobel Prize. Why should smell be any different? Turin has given his life to this great riddle. And in the end, incredibly, after an epic struggle, he solved it. Then things got really interesting...Chandler Burr tells the extraordinary story of Luca Turin, his incredible sense of smell and his battles with the scientific establishment in as a remarkable quirky a tale of obsession as Susan Orlean's bestseller "The Orchid Thief".

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

For as long as anyone can remember, a man named Luca Turin has had an uncanny relationship with smells. He has been compared to the hero of Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume, but his story is in fact stranger, because it is true. It concerns how he made use of his powerful gifts to solve one of the last great mysteries of the human body: how our noses work.

Luca Turin can distinguish the components of just about any smell, from the world’s most refined perfumes to the air in a subway car on the Paris metro. A distinguished scientist, he once worked in an unrelated field, though he made a hobby of collecting fragrances. But when, as a lark, he published a collection of his reviews of the world’s perfumes, the book hit the small, insular business of perfume makers like a thunderclap. Who is this man Luca Turin, they demanded, and how does he know so much? The closed community of scent creation opened up to Luca Turin, and he discovered a fact that astonished him: no one in this world knew how smell worked. Billions and billions of dollars were spent creating scents in a manner amounting to glorified trial and error.

The solution to the mystery of every other human sense has led to the Nobel Prize, if not vast riches. Why, Luca Turin thought, should smell be any different? So he gave his life to this great puzzle. And in the end, incredibly, it would seem that he solved it. But when enormously powerful interests are threatened and great reputations are at stake, Luca Turin learned, nothing is quite what it seems.

Acclaimed writer Chandler Burr has spent four years chronicling Luca Turin’s quest to unravel the mystery of how our sense of smell works. What has emerged is an enthralling, magical book that changes the way we think about that area between our mouth and our eyes, and its profound, secret hold on our lives.

From the Back Cover:

"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, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

"Professional perfume critic, obsessive collector of rare fragrances, academic-bad-boy biochemist and world-class eccentric, Luca Turin would be the worthy subject of a book even if he hadn't come up with a revolutionary scientific theory. Written with skill and verve, The Emperor of Scent is an engrossing intellectual detective story about one iconoclast's quest to solve a centuries-old mystery--how smell works."
-Miles Harvey, author of The Island of Lost Maps

"The Emperor of Scent is a gem of a book--a suspense story at whose heart is a man of super-human powers who is also flawed and justifiably arrogant and dangerously steeped in hubris. I challenge any intelligent, curious mind not to tumble into this story and find themselves immediately engrossed. I fell in love with Luca Turin--he is everything I admire in a human: irreverent, witty, imaginative, determined, elitist without a trace of snobbery and above all a creative genius. And Chandler Burr is a magician himself, and a man we should all be so lucky to have at a dinner party: I was mesmerized and enlightened by the many perfect asides woven into the main body of this incredible true tale."
-Alexandra Fuller, author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0099460238
• ISBN 13: 9780099460237
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 468