The Perfume Thief Book Club Kit

“A superb novel, enchanting and brutal in equal measure. This is historical fiction at its finest, vivid and beautifully rendered; and yet in their longing for a lost world, Schaffert’s characters feel entirely contemporary to our present moment.”—Emily St. John Mandel, author of The Glass Hotel

Timothy Schaffert’s The Perfume Thief will fill your senses and whisk you away to the cabarets of World War II Paris where the singers, actors, and even thieves who call the city home work in the shadows to undermine their Nazi occupiers. Clementine is a seventy-two year-old reformed con artist with a penchant for impeccably tailored suits. Once famous for her daring thefts of the world’s most coveted fragrances, she is pulled out of retirement to steal the recipe book of a now-missing famous Parisian perfumer from under the nose of a Nazi bureaucrat. What follows is a story of illicit romance, espionage, fashion, revelry, and a dazzling portrait of the queer resistance.

There’s no shortage of topics for your book club to discuss, and we’re helping you set the mood with our Book Club Kit. Inside you’ll find a list of provocative perfumes, a cocktail recipe, and a playlist to take you back in time, and, as an added treat, the characters rendered in Candy Wrapper Fashion by the author himself.

To download a PDF of the book club kit, click here or on the image below.