The Waiter
An Interactive Story
Contributors
By Kwan Ann Tan
Formats and Prices
- On Sale
- Nov 3, 2026
- Page Count
- 144 pages
- Publisher
- Union Square & Co.
- ISBN-13
- 9781454972440
Price
$15.99Price
$20.99 CADFormat
Format:
- Trade Paperback $15.99 $20.99 CAD
- ebook $10.99 $13.99 CAD
Preorder from Retailers:
In a future London, the rich hoard wealth and Waiters do the menial jobs no one else has time for. The city is being swallowed into the ground by “maws,” gaping holes that appear and disappear without explanation—no one knows how or why they form, only that they seem to manifest wherever will cause the most chaos.
Occasionally, a maw will leave behind a person: someone who wakes up without memories or any understanding of how they came to be swallowed up by the darkness.
You are one of them. As an unnamed Waiter, you must select your jobs carefully or risk losing work credits, while also trying to keep your humanity intact. Meanwhile, a desire to understand yourself creeps in: Who were you before this? Who might you become?
A bold reimagination of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel, this book offers a world of possibilities, with 11 different endings and countless journeys towards them. A unique, voice-driven literary experience, this is a novel that prompts readers to wrestle with our agency and our desires in a world feels like it’s coming apart at the seams.
Series:
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“A moving, elegant and wonderfully constructed book. Its many paths brush past the strange horrors at the centre of the story and let you glimpse them from the corner of your eye, or push them to the back of your mind, as you make your choices and explore the edges of what's possible within this ominous and beautiful world.”Holly Gramazio, New York Times bestselling author of The Husbands
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"Brilliantly inventive and moving. I’ve not read anything like it before.”Soula Emmanuel, author of the Lambda Award-winning Wild Geese
