The Pigeon (German: Die Taube) is a novella by Patrick Süskind about the fictional character Jonathan Noel, a solitary Parisian bank security guard who undergoes an existential crisis when a pigeon roosts in front of his one-room apartment's door, prohibiting him entrance to his private sanctuary. The story takes place in the span of one day, and follows how this seemingly insignificant event compounds to threaten Noel's sanity. The titular pigeon can be a symbol for disorder intruding on the protagonist's meticulously organized existence, and may be seen as similar to U.S. writer Edgar Allan Poe's 1845 poem The Raven, which features its titular bird perched over its protagonist's door instead of M. Noel's pigeon. This book is Süskind's followup to his nine-year bestselling first novel, Perfume.