Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Paperback)

Süskind was born in Ambach, Bavaria. His father was writer and journalist Wilhelm Emanuel Süskind, who worked for the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and is famous as the co-author of the well-known publication Aus dem Wörterbuch des Unmenschen (From the Dictionary of an Inhuman), a critical collection of essays concerning the language of the Nazi era. Patrick Süskind went to school in Holzhausen, a small Bavarian village. His mother worked as a sports trainer; his older brother Martin E. Süskind is also a journalist. 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. After his qualification testing for university and his mandatory community service, he studied medieval and modern history at the University of Munich and in Aix-en-Provence from 1968–1974, but never graduated. Funded by his parents, he relocated to Paris, where he wrote "mainly short, unpublished fiction and longer screenplays which were not made into films".