num_pages: 115
description: Patrick Süskind's new book—the first since his Perfume became an international literary sensation—encompasses within the miniature perfection of its form, and a mere twenty-four hours, the destruction and tenderly comic resurrection of a little Paris bank guard. Jonathan Noel—already past fifty, with the last payment for his tiny attic room only months away, and his life's plan laid out ahead of him—opens his door one morning to find a pigeon in the landing. This atom-splitting disruption in the orderly existence of a most anxious creature of habit precipitates a series of crises that are as moving and dismaying as they are funny. Teetering precariously on the edge of madness, Jonathan careens headlong on a journey of the self that leads him—and us—from terror to redemption, from darkness to light, to an emotional resolution that offers further proof of a virtuoso writer's extraordinary art.
language: German
title: The Pigeon
titlecomplete: The Pigeon
characters: Jonathan Noel
genres: Fiction, Short Stories, German Literature, Literature, Classics, Novels, Contemporary, Germany, 20th Century, Novella
ratings_count: 18232
places: Paris
publisher: Knopf