Waiter in Paris

An evocative portrait of the underbelly of contemporary Paris as seen through the eyes of a young waiter scraping out a living in the City of Light. A waiters job is to deceive you. They want you to believe in a luxurious calm because on the other side of that door . . . is hell. Edward Chisholms spellbinding memoir of his time as a Parisian waiter takes you beneath the surface of one of the most iconic cities in the worldand right into its glorious underbelly. He inhabits a world of inhuman hours, snatched sleep and dive bars; scraping by on coffee, bread and cigarettes, often under sadistic managers, with a wage so low youre fighting your colleagues for tips. Your colleaguesincluding thieves, narcissists, ex-soldiers, immigrants, wannabe actors, and drug dealersare the closest thing to family that youve got. Its physically demanding, frequently humiliating and incredibly competitive. But it doesnt matter because youre in Paris, the center of the universe, and theres nowhere else youd rather be in the world.