Jitterbug Perfume
1984 novel by Tom Robbins
Jitterbug Perfume is American writer Tom Robbins' fourth novel and was listed on the New York Times Best Seller list in 1985. The book follows two interweaving storylines, one in Ancient Eurasia and one in the present day. The story connects dueling perfumers in Seattle, Paris and New Orleans to a bottle of incomparable perfume created by two unlikely but defiant lovers of the past who seek immortality. Orchestrated by a mysterious Irish philosopher, the past and the present collide when the characters come together and discover the unexpected path to life-everlasting. The book was first published in 1984 by Bantam Books and later reprinted by Random House.
Plot summary
A powerful and chiseled 8th-century king named Alobar narrowly escapes regicide at the hands of his own subjects, from a custom of killing the leader at the first sign of aging. After fleeing, no longer a king but only a man, he travels through Eurasia, on a newfound quest for the secret to longevity. Eventually he stumbles upon the stamping grounds of the pungent goat-god Pan, who is slowly losing his godly powers as the world turns toward Christianity. Pan encourages Alobar to continue East in search of the masters of immortality.
Meanwhile, in present day Seattle, Priscilla, a part-time waitress and amateur perfumer, is stalled in re-creating the fragrance from the last remaining drops of a three-hundred-year-old perfume bottle in her possession.
The public source identifies “Jitterbug Perfume” as 1984 novel by Tom Robbins. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Jitterbug, Perfume and novel.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1144829. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1985 and 1984.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jitterbug Perfume” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.