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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: AudiobookHub Recommendation
Chapter 2: — The Son Who Won’t Stay Buried
Chapter 3: — The House of Yves and the Life She’s Not Allowed to Want
Chapter 4: — Olympia’s Missing Note
Chapter 5: — Agra: Courtesans, Attars, and the Scent of Rain
Chapter 6: — The Knock at the Door
Chapter 7: — Theft in the Lab, War in the Family
Chapter 8: — The Life She Chooses
Chapter 9: — Becoming: Shimla, the New Work, the New Family Shape
Chapter 10: — A New Equilibrium of Scent and Self
Description
The Perfumist of Paris follows Radha Fontaine, an Indian woman building a life in Paris as a fragrance lab assistant at the House of Yves. When she’s handed her first major project—creating a perfume inspired by Manet’s Olympia—Radha’s talent surges, but so do the pressures: a resentful husband, a rebellious daughter, and the constant strain of being an outsider in France.
Her search for the missing note in her formula brings her back to India, where courtesans in Agra guide her to a rare scent: petrichor, the essence of rain-soaked earth. But the trip also detonates the secret she’s spent seventeen years burying—she had a son at thirteen and gave him up for adoption. When that son arrives in Paris, Radha must confront the parts of herself she sealed away and decide what it means to be a mother, an artist, and a woman with a life of her own.
Who Should Listen
- Listeners who love emotionally driven stories about identity, motherhood, and reinvention.
- Readers fascinated by art, scent, and the behind-the-scenes world of perfumery.
- Fans of character-focused drama set between India and France in the 1970s–1980s.