Nicotine. By Gregor Hens. Translated by Jen Calleja. Other Press; 176 pages; $16.95. Fitzcarraldo Editions; £12.99.

“I REALLY shouldn’t be writing this book. It’s too much of a risk,” notes Gregor Hens, a German author and an accomplished translator, at the start of his memoir about smoking. Yet write it he does, disguised as a quest to understand why: why did he do it? And, though this is a modest book concerned only with the memories and motivations of its author, why, by extension, does anyone?

The fact is, as every smoker knows but few admit, nicotine is easy enough to kick. The physiological addiction can be overcome with patches, with hypnosis, with self-help books, with good old-fashioned will power. Nicotine is the least of any smoker’s problems. The truth is that every ex-smoker is and always will be a smoker. This book is, he admits, “a continuation of my addiction via other means.”

Why do smokers do it? Because, as Mr Hens writes, “every cigarette that I’ve ever smoked served a purpose—they were a signal, medication, a stimulant or a sedative, they were a plaything, an accessory, a fetish object, something to help pass the time, a memory aid, a communication tool or an object of meditation. Sometimes…all at once.” Cigarettes represent youth, rebellion, wilful disregard for sensible advice.

They function as punctuation for life. They make it coherent and add drama, inserting commas and semi-colons and ellipses (and, in the end, an inarguable and often premature full stop). “Whether I actually smoke or not, my personality is a smoker’s personality,” Mr Hens writes. To stop smoking isn’t just to give up the intake of that toxic, redeeming air into your lungs. It is to cease being yourself. That is why quitting is so hard.

Readers and smokers and especially readers who smoke will be grateful that Mr Hens wrote “Nicotine” despite the risk of relapse. It is that rare book on addiction: neither preaching nor self-loathing, lapsing only occasionally into romanticism. And like the best cigarettes, it is over too soon. Though any more would probably be too much.