Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

by Patrick Süskind

Whoever has survived his own birth in a garbage can is not so easily shoved back out of this world again.

For his soul he required nothing. Security, attention, tenderness, love—or whatever all those things are called that children are said to require—were totally dispensable for the young Grenouille. Or rather, so it seems to us, he had totally dispensed with them just to go on living—from the very start.

Grenouille is born evil, the misfortunes he endures through life aren't sad events as he lives through them without emotion. He is often compared as a tick.