Robert Olen Butler, author of the novel “Perfume River,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. Robert Olen Butler is the author of several novels and short story collections. His collection, “A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain” won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The author of sixteen novels and six collections of short stories, his best-known works focus on the legacy of Vietnam, either looking at the war itself or on its aftermath in Vietnam and in America.