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In May 1742, Jean-Jaques Mussard found something horrible underneath his
rosebeds. Maître Mussard’s Bequest (Bloomsbury, £1, ISBN 0 7475 2894
2) recounts the experiments and spiralling thoughts that left the philosopher a
shell of his former self. From a minor passage in Rousseau’s Confessions,
Patrick Süskind has spun a marvellous tale of scientific obsession in the
Enlightenment, published for £1 to celebrate Bloomsbury’s 10th
birthday.