Smell

When her father is killed in a riot in Nairobi, Leela’s mother chooses to send her away to her childless aunt and uncle in Paris, while she herself, along with her two sons, seeks refuge with her brother in London. Forced to make the brutal transition from the open spaces and warm security of her home in Kenya to the claustrophobia of a poky apartment in Paris, Leela settles into the cheerless routine of helping her aunt in the house and working at her uncle’s store. But even this tenuous protection is short-lived, and one night she finds herself alone on the streets of an alien city, without a passport of money. As she struggles to survive, stumbling from job to job and from relationship, Leela discovers in herself an unusual quality – her extraordinary sensitivity to smell. A seemingly innocuous and occasionally useful attribute, it gradually begins to colour her ever emotion and response, from sexual arousal to the enjoyment of food. But when the dark feral stench of her own body threatens to overpower her, Leela is frightened into the realization that perhaps she has lost al control over her life ...