In Sensorium

In Sensorium Notes for My People

First edition

Hardback (22 Feb 2022)

Save $9.60

  • RRP $34.50
  • $24.90
Add to basket

Includes delivery to the United States

3 copies available online - Usually dispatched within 72 hours

Publisher's Synopsis

Fragrance has long been used to mark who is civilized and who is barbaric, who is pure and who is polluted, who is free and who is damned-



Focusing their gaze on our most primordial sense, writer and perfumer Tanaïs weaves a brilliant and expansive memoir, a reckoning that offers a critical, alternate history of South Asia from an American Bangladeshi Muslim femme perspective. From stories of their childhood in the South, Midwest, and New York; to transcendent experiences with lovers, psychedelics, and fragrances; to trips home to their motherland, Tanaïs builds a universe of memories and scent: a sensorium. Alongside their personal history, and at the very heart of this work, is an interrogation of the ancient violence of caste, rape culture, patriarchy, war, and the inherited ancestral trauma of being from a lush land constantly denuded, a land still threatened and disappearing because of colonization, capitalism, and climate change. 



Structured like a perfume-moving from base to heart to head notes-IN SENSORIUM interlaces eons of South Asian perfume history, erotic and religious texts, survivor testimonies, and material culture with memoir. In Sensorium is archive and art, illuminating the great crises of our time with the language of Liberation.

Book information

ISBN: 9780358381709
Publisher: HMH Books
Imprint: Mariner Books
Pub date:
Edition: First edition
DEWEY: 954
DEWEY edition: 23
Language: English
Number of pages: 352
Weight: 416g
Height: 149mm
Width: 217mm
Spine width: 36mm