The Scent of a Transparent Night: A Novel

In the first book of an exquisite and sensuous award-winning series, a reclusive ex-bookseller is hired to work under a highly unusual but gifted perfumer, who creates custom-made fragrances for complicated—and sometimes dangerous—clients.

After leaving her job as a bookseller, Ichika Wakamiya is living a lethargic life. Unemployed, indifferent, and all too comfortable in the darkness of her bedroom, days pass, but nothing seems to change. Until one day, Ichika spots a part-time job ad at the supermarket. Someone's looking for a housekeeper...no experience necessary. Conditions negotiable. Curiosity (and lack of funds) gets the best of Ichika—she decides to apply.

Despite a thoroughly odd interview, Ichika fills all the requirements. She then begins to work under the eccentric yet elegant Saku Ogawa, a genius perfumer with an extraordinary sense of smell. In an old European-style mansion surrounded by lush gardens, Saku produces custom-made fragrances on request. But none of these requests are quite what they seem. Saku's clientele is almost as secretive as he is, bringing trouble that Shinjo, a detective and Saku's only real friend, must clean up.

Ichika also has her secrets. Wrestling with an adolescent trauma she can't tell anyone about, she's increasingly drawn into Saku's mysterious operation. With each new assignment, Ichika learns more about her unusual employer and colleagues, as well as about the delicate intersection between smell, memory, repression, and the unconscious. As Saku's scents expose the layers that lie deep within each of his clients, Ichika too begins to understand her own "notes," in her complex journey towards self-determination, knowledge, and love.

Romantic, moody, and scent-sual, The Scent of a Transparent Night is a gorgeous and intricate exploration of how the senses bury into our past and transform our present, from one of Japan's most exciting contemporary novelists.

Translated from Japanese by Lucy North