Fermentation is about the senses, about
carnal pleasures and one woman's insatiable appetites. In the midst of a scorching summer, the refuse men go on strike, the air turns stagnant, and Fermentation's young narrator,
Odissa, becomes pregnant by her boyfriend, Serge, a fire-eater. In the eerie calm of the city's relentless heat, she soon discovers that rather than oysters and ice-cream, her pregnant craving is for cheese. As she makes her way through a variety of cheeses, Odissa finds that her hunger spawns a series of incredibly vivid and erotic dreams and
fantasies, until it doesn't matter that Serge is off with his circus in Switzerland, while she is left pregnant and sweating in a city slowly fermenting.