With the exception of a handful of bestselling novels, books about fragrance rarely appeal to audiences outside the perfume community, and seldom raise controversy among their readers. The opposite is true for Chandler Burr’s The Emperor of Scent, which caused both a stampede and a stir as it hit the bookstores in 2003.

The Emperor of Scent tells the true story of Luca Turin, lecturer in biophysics (1993-2000) at University College London. Turin has developed a new theory of smell, which he attempts to bring under the attention of the academic community. His ideas on how smell works are radically different from those of the ‘established’ researchers in the field, and go against all principles by which manufacturers produce synthetic odorants. As Turin submits his paper to the renowned magazine Nature, his hopes for glory are clouded by a mist of opposition: the road to recognition proves to be long and arduous.

The resistence to Turin’s theory is the main theme in the second half of the book…

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