Author

General Information

History

Patrick Süskind was born in Ambach, near Munich, on March 26, 1949. He is the son of the well-known writer and journalist Wilhelm Süskind, who, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, regularly wrote about his son in his editorials. Patrick's brother, Martin, also went on to become a prominent journalist and political speech writer. Süskind has many relatives from the aristocracy in Württemberg, making him one of the descendants of the exegete Johann Albrecht Bengel and of the reformer Johannes Brenz. Süskind began studying modern and medieval history at universities in Munich and in Aix-en-Provence in France but broke off his studies in 1974. He relocated to Paris, where he focused on writing.

picture of Patrick Suskind

Works

He first gained widespread recognition with a one-man dramatic monologue, The Double Bass, published in 1981. Perfume was published four years later, with various screenplays and novellas scattered throughout the '80s and '90s. Süskind's last work of fiction was The Story of Mr Sommer (1991), a novella about a boy growing up rather unhappily in a small village in southern Germany. Süskind's most recent authored work, the essay On Love and Death, was published in 2006.

Personality?

While Perfume is Süskind's only novel, it is not his only work. The Bavarian-born author also has written various TV screenplays, novellas and essays, as well as published translations of work by the French cartoonist Jean-Jacque Sempes. He has won numerous literary prizes for his works, many of which he has declined to receive.

Süskind lives a reclusive life between Munich and France. He has given a grand total of four interviews, according to the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, most of them from the 1980s. Barely any public photos of him exist. Following a decades-long wait to obtain film rights from the author, Perfume was finally made into a film in 2006 by director Tom Twyker. Süskind did not attend the premiere.