Alain Claude Sulzer was born in Basel in 1953. His first novel was published in 1983 and he has since written four further novels, including Annas Maske (2001) and numerous short stories. A Perfect Waiter is his first novel to be published in English. He lives in Alsace. John Brownjohn is one of Britain's leading translators from the German and has won critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic including for 'My Wounded Heart': The Life of LIlli Jahn 1900-44 by Martin Doerry (Bloomsbury, 2004). Among his most recent awards are the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for Thomas Brussig's Heroes Like Us and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize for Marcel Beyer's The Karnau Tapes.