The Emperor of Scent: A True Story of Perfume and Obsession

"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

"What happens when Luca Turin, a likable scientist who happens to possess an unusually sensitive nose, proposes a new theory of smell that promises to unravel the mystery [of scent] once and for all? That's what readers find out in this often funny, picaresque exposé of the closed world of whiffs, aromas and odors--and the people who study them."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Exhibiting more grace than a magician in tails, Chandler Burr brings science and the people who practice it to life in The Emperor of Scent. . . . Burr does a remarkable job of explaining both Turin, the man behind the idea, and his science."
--The Denver Post

"Chandler Burr . . . has transformed a chance meeting with a curious biophysicist named Luca Turin into an amusing and poetic adventure in science and art."
--The Washington Post

Provides a close-up look at scientific maverick Luca Turin, a man whose remarkable powers of smell and obsession with perfume led to the discovery of how the nose works and how scents are detected. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.