The article deals with the comparison of olfactory images in Patrick Suskind’s novel Perfume and Tayeb Salih’s The Season of Migration to the North in the communication context of Arab and European cultures. The initial theoretical point, based on the existing developments in the field of literary studies and cultural studies, is the idea of olfactory images as an essential component of the poetics of a work of art. The role played by olfactory images in revealing the characters of the two heroes Jean-Baptiste Grenouille and Mustafa Said is considered.