In Search of Perfumes

‘[An] immersive debut… with detailed accounts of his trips and vivid descriptions of the scents … [Roques’] rich travelogue will transport readers’ Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

In Search of Perfumes is a fragrant journey across the world, revealing the beauty and mysteries of the perfume trade.

Fruits, flowers, spices, bark, leaves, and branches are just some of the natural ingredients from the plant world that are used in the creation of perfume. Dominique Roques, travelling from Andalusia to Somaliland by way of Bulgaria, Laos, El Salvador, Indonesia and Egypt, describes his search to find the best natural ingredients, precious to perfumers everywhere.

In Search of Perfumes demonstrates how the prestigious multi-million-pound perfume industry may begin its life as a single plant harvested by producers surviving on ancestral traditions and techniques and often risking their lives in the process as they combat the rising threat of climate change. Roques reveals the beauty and mysteries of a familiar trade; a return to the source of the world’s scents.

Author Biography

Dominique Roques is the head of sourcing at Firmenich, a Swiss company which provides the world’s leading perfume brands with natural fragrances, essences, and extracts. Over the last thirty years he has worked with companies such as Bulgari, Thierry Mugler, Guerlain and Yves Saint Laurent.

Stephanie Smee is a translator into English of all things literary and French. Her most recent translation is of Pascal Janovjak’s The Rome Zoo, which was the winner of the Swiss Literature Award.