Goodreads asked Amanda Hampson:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Amanda Hampson I had been playing with the idea of an unworldly single woman caught in a drama between more sophisticated and manipulative people for some time—imagining a sort of late in life ‘bildungsroman’. I had the sense of the premise and character journey but not the setting.

Early in 2014, I set off on a solo journey to walk the Camino de Santiago, 800km across Spain. As often happens when you have time to think, you think about nothing on the surface but the sub-conscious is running in the background. On the 39th day of the 40 day journey, the idea behind 'The French Perfumer' came to me.

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