A Waiter in Paris: Adventures in the Dark Heart of the City by Edward Chisholm -2022- 382 Pages - A Paris in July 2024

• Paris in July 2024 

 Works I have so far featured for Paris in July 2024

1. The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles

2. A Waiter in Paris: Adventures in the Dark Heart of the City by Edward Chisholm -2022- 

A Waiter in Paris: Adventures in the Dark Heart of the City by Edward Chisholm is kind of a contemporary remake of Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933,  by George Orwell.  One of my never to be realised dreams was to take my wife to a five starred restaurant in Paris.  Sometimes you are better off  not knowing too much of what hidden from the public, as Edward Chisholm from London does in his account of working in Parisian restaurants.

"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 waiter's 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 Chisholm's spellbinding memoir of his time as a Parisian waiter takes you beneath the surface of one of the most iconic cities in the world—and 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 you're fighting your colleagues for tips. Your colleagues—including thieves, narcissists, ex-soldiers, immigrants, wannabe actors, and drug dealers—are the closest thing to family that you've got.

It's physically demanding, frequently humiliating and incredibly competitive. But it doesn't matter because you're in Paris, the center of the universe, and there's nowhere else you'd rather be in the world." -from The Publisher Simon and Schuster 

Edward Chisholm was born in England and moved to Paris after graduating from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. A resident in the City of Lights for seven years, Chisholm spent the first four of them working all manner of low-paid restaurant jobs, from waiting and bartending, while trying to build a career as a writer. Now Chisholm makes a living as a freelance writer. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, and the Financial Times magazine. He lives in England.