Iraqi publishing house Dar Al Mada is preparing to release a new Arabic version of Patrick Süskind's famous novel "The Pigeon", translated by Kamiran Hoj. The introduction of the book is written by Iraqi novelist Ali Badr.
Patrick Süskind has one photo shared in public. It shows a skinny man with handsome features, smart eyes, and a bald patch at the front of his head. No one saw another picture of the writer. Although journalists chased him everywhere, none of them managed to capture a photo of his face or even draw him in a portrait. Süskind made only four interviews in his entire life and refused to appear publicly on TVs or at festivals.
He never received the prizes he won including the best literary work award (France, 1986), the Toucan Prize (1987), and the FAZ-Literaturpreis (1987). He also never attended a show of a movie he wrote, and never signed a book for anyone.
No one knows where he lives or what kind of rituals he practices. The details we usually know about the writers we love are not available in Süskind's case. No one knows his goals, views about major causes, opinions about the writers of his generation, relationships, or family (According to unconfirmed information, Süskind lives in in Munich (Seeheim or Starnberg) or in Montolieu in France.
He has only one friend, the French cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé, who drew the images of his novel "The Story of Mr. Sommer." Süskind, in return, translated some of Sempé's works into German. He is reportedly married to Tania Graff and has one child).
He is a hidden, overwhelmed writer who has a dark and honest view he elaborated in the script of his movie "Rossini," which explores the life of a writer who refuses to be paid for transforming his novel into a movie. It is believed that Süskind used this script to talk about himself.
The life of this German writer wasn't ordinary at all. His father is the journalist Wilhelm Emanuel Süskind, and his brother is the well-known journalist Martin E. Süskind. He is also the descendant of the exegete Johann Albrecht. Patrick was born in 1949 in Ambach and grew in Bavaria, in a region currently known as Münsing. He was different from the other members of his family and peers.
He preferred loneliness, and was always preoccupied with reading medieval literature and history. He also studied several Latin languages including French, Spanish, and Greek, in addition to politics and theology.
Süskind suddenly decided to ditch education and wrote his first novel, but his biggest achievement was "The Perfume," a novel he published in 1985. It gained an astounding fame, was translated into 49 languages, and sold around 20 million copies," Badr wrote in the introduction.
