Merde at the Paris Olympics

Author(s): Stephen Clarke

Location(s): Paris

Genre(s): Fiction, Humour, Travelogue

Era(s): modern day

Merde at the Paris Olympics is the seventh title in the Merde series of comedy novels (A Year in the Merde, Merde Actually, Dial M for Merde et al) which have been translated into more than 20 languages and sold more than a million copies worldwide.

In Merde at the Paris Olympics, Englishman Paul West is living in Paris and gearing up for the 2024 Olympics. He accepts a job translating for a French group who are campaigning to get pétanque accepted as an official Olympic event. In Paul’s opinion, lobbying lumps of lead around while drinking pastis is barely a sport – it’s more an excuse for Provencal men to avoid cooking dinner. But he needs the cash.

Meanwhile, Paul falls in love with a French tech genius – who thinks he’s an idiot. Paul also applies for French nationality and embarks on an exhausting war of attrition with France’s Napoleonic bureaucrats (and his ex, Elodie). Paul’s friend Jake the grunge poet, declaring that the Olympics and Paralympics discriminate against the talentless and lazy, invents the “Nolympics”.

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