Corey Fah Does Social Mobility

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD 2024 
LONGLISTED FOR THE NOTA BENE PRIZE 2024 
 
A radical, joyful novel from Goldsmiths Prize-winning author Isabel Waidner 
 
In flight from a traumatic rural childhood, Corey Fah has come to earth in a one-bed council flat in the capital. Trapped, with partner Drew, in the limited world which late capitalism has allotted them, they are modestly happy but practically futureless. 
 
Until, one day, Corey is offered a life-changing prize from out of the blue. Things are looking up – but as Corey soon finds, it’s one thing winning a prize in life’s lottery, and quite another being able to collect it – especially if you are a queer, working class immigrant with all of History working against you. 
 
Corey Fah’s pursuit of the elusive prize – and an escape from precarity – is a whirlwind, epic journey through the streets of the city and the time-loops of the past, written with boundless energy and invention. 
 
Social mobility, in this radiant, radical novel, is never a simple step up the ladder, but a hopeful leap into the void. 
 
Praise for Corey Fah Does Social Mobility: 
 
'A head-spinning, mind-bending roller coaster of fun, horror, and subversion' Kamila Shamsie 
 
'A radical, rebellious novel . . . [Waidner] brings a fresh lens to our troubled world' Observer 
 
[The] writer everyone is talking about . . . and deservedly so' Bernardine Evaristo 
 
'Filled with wickedly sharp commentary and well-aimed digs at hypocrisy and injustice' Times Literary Supplement

[The] writer everyone is talking about . . . and deservedly so . . . Their explosive sensibility and style are as far removed from mediocre prose and middle-class manners as you can imagine

Buckle up! Corey Fah Does Social Mobility is a head-spinning, mind-bending roller coaster of fun, horror, and subversion. I love it

The fantastical and the familiar merge in this energetic inquiry into class politics and cultural capital . . . Since their debut novel, Gaudy Bauble, in 2017, Waidner's writing has been admired for its remarkable innovation, unflinching political vision, vivid language and, frankly, hilarious charm . . . It is tempting to predict that this book, which gives a whole new dimension to the idea of the zeitgeist . . . will see Waidner step on to the podium once more

With each book, they get better and better. Corey Fah Does Social Mobility is that rare thing: An authentically radical novel that is joyful and hilarious

A radical, rebellious novel . . . [Waidner] brings a fresh lens to our troubled world . . . A biting, state of the nation work that raises the profile of civilisation's appointed underdogs and challenges the status quo of binary consciousness . . . bold, feisty work

[It is] rare to find a novel with real stylistic and political ambition

[A] sprightly novel . . . [Waidner] mischievously challenges received notions of social mobility

Filled with wickedly sharp commentary and well-aimed digs at hypocrisy and injustice . . . Waidner's idiosyncratic prose [paints] terrifying, transcendent and topsy-turvy images . . . Corey Fah Does Social Mobility is, perhaps surprisingly, both sentimental and optimistic in its depiction of love (for ourselves and those around us) as a radical act

It's beginning to look like there's nothing the immensely talented Waidner can't do

Waidner's original prose spins fantastical imagery with social commentary

A dazzlingly original satirical novel about a writer on the edge of glory but struggling to get their hands on the prize

Waidner gifts us with another wild and radical tale

Darkly funny and thrilling . . . Waidner’s queer Kafkaesque romp is great fun

Surreal and splendid . . . an eye-popping carnival that crackles with wit

Feisty, funny, playful, and surreal . . . It feels, in the best way, like a spirited romp through someone else’s stress dream

Isabel Waidner is the author of five novels – including Sterling Karat Gold, which won the Goldsmiths Prize and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and Corey Fah Does Social Mobility which was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. They teach in the School of the Arts at Queen Mary University of London.

In flight from a traumatic rural childhood, Corey Fah has come to earth in a one-bed council flat in the capital. Trapped, with partner Drew, in the limited world which late capitalism has allotted them, they are modestly happy but practically futureless. 
 
Until, one day, Corey is offered a life-changing prize from out of the blue. Things are looking up – but as Corey soon finds, it’s one thing winning a prize in life’s lottery, and quite another being able to collect it – especially if you are a queer, working class immigrant with all of History working against you. 
 
Corey Fah’s pursuit of the elusive prize – and an escape from precarity – is a whirlwind, epic journey through the streets of the city and the time-loops of the past, written with boundless energy and invention. 
 
Social mobility, in this radiant, radical novel, is never a simple step up the ladder, but a hopeful leap into the void.

Isabel Waidner

Wonderfully implausible and absurdly humorous, the latest novel from a Goldsmiths Prize-winner follows a rich tradition . . . As If is a great step forward, a maturing of Waidner's talent with no loss of the quixotic qualities that gave the other books their charm . . . It adds depth without sacrificing energy . . . Kafka and Beckett are good touchstones, because, like Waidner, they are very funny without telling obvious jokes . . . the language in As If never does what we expect . . . it gives the story an impressive dynamism

A daring doppelganger puzzle . . . The Goldsmiths prize-winner’s fifth novel channels The Comedy of Errors by way of Samuel Beckett . . . the novel feels calculatedly aloof, the emancipatory glee of Waidner’s past work giving way to a more subterranean drama shaped by psychic contortions of dissimulation and masquerade . . . A taut psychological puzzler, As If leaves behind antic cartwheeling – no UFOs or repurposed celebrity biographies – for suspense and ambiguity

Suffused with cosmic bafflement and dark humor. As If plays to these strengths, suggesting how a profusion of selves and their attendant possibilities lie hidden beneath the crust of a chosen identity . . . . Amid the dizzying back-and-forth, Waidner conceals a subtle exploration of midlife crisis. The foreclosed potential of one life clarifies the possibility of another

A surreal existential caper exploring identity and performance, midlife purpose and regret, and the difficulty of finding - and escaping yourself . . . Isabel Waidner makes a playful contribution to the literary tradition [of dopplegangers], following in the footsteps of Dostoevsky, Kafka and Beckett . . . Sly, absurd and poignant, it is a triumph of narrative voice

The new novel from the queer experimentalist extraordinaire Isabel Waidner . . . Waidner's writing, always dazzlingly clever and formally inventive, is here also deeply moving. As If is a great success and an intriguing departure: a dourly beguiling dark comedy about fluffing your lines halfway through the performance of a lifetime and being given another chance

An existential farce that playfully explores the precarity of working life . . . In Waidner-world the surreal is always lurking, gleefully waiting to trip the reader up. As If uses the acting profession and its inherent themes of performance and doubleness to explore the precarity of work . . . Waidner possesses something of Orton’s macabre relish at kicking back at authority [and their] brand of anarchic dissonance and absurdist comic jolts buoy the novel along

Waidner’s craft is evident in the comically intricate layers of performance and mirroring that quickly accrete in the text . . . As If becomes a concise and clever take on Jung’s concept of the shadow self – a parable on the failure to accept one’s true desire, and to later find oneself haunted by the vestige of a former self

Cult author Waidner has, over the course of four novels focusing on working-class, queer and British identity, become something of an underground national treasure

Funny and incisive, Waidner’s latest piece of genre-busting fiction is a surreal tale of two men with an uncanny resemblance to one another who cross paths and, essentially, swap lives . . . A very clever exploration of alternative lives and paths not taken

This is a stunning book with much to say about how grief can alter our life (or lives). A towering achievement from one of contemporary literature’s most original minds

An audacious and enchanting novel, As If explores life’s alternatives—fantasies and nightmares, encounters dreaded and desired, opportunities lost and gained—in an ingenious setting. We enter its world of doubles and mirror images with a thrill and leave with a deeper understanding of our own naked hearts

Yiyun Li, author of 'Things in Nature Merely Grow'

As If is an entirely new species of fiction: a spellbindingly clever and profound romp; an urgent exploration of contemporary masculinity in love with, and at war, with itself; a story of desire, art, and redemption. Isabel Waidner is the heir to many legends – Kafka, Bosch, Monty Python, Jonathan Swift – and their new novel summons gorgeous, canny, comedic tulips from the austerity-hammered present. A total stunner

Jordy Rosenberg, author of 'Confessions of the Fox'

Waidner once again proves themself to be one of our most exciting and significant writers – I am in love with their smart, energetic prose . . . This brilliant novel dissects identity and performance as mechanisms of survival in the 21st century, asking what choice we have in how we live and who we become. Through doppelgängers and replacements, relation and differentiation, As If examines the selves we slip into or enact, as well as the grief and sacrifices of a life in the arts

As If holds a multiplying and expanding universe, whose characters are both wonderfully strange and wickedly human. At once twisty and delicious, beautiful and imaginative, this is a book that will surprise you in the best way possible

Kristen Arnett, author of 'Stop Me If You've Heard This One'

Isabel Waidner turns ordinary life into a hall of mirrors, full of ironic melancholy and sly existential twists – perfect for anyone who’s ever wondered ‘what if?’

Service 95, 'The 21 Must-Read Books To Have On Your Radar In 2026'

Short, poignant, and gripping. . . Beautifully written and emotionally perceptive

Two men meet in a flat in London. They are total strangers and yet they look remarkably alike. Lewis is grieving his dead wife; Korine is hiding from his very-much-alive one. Lewis never had children; Korine is an ambivalent parent at best. Lewis is an erstwhile actor, too depressed to attend the big audition that has just fallen into his lap. Korine has tried a dozen dead-end jobs but never pursued his acting dreams. 
 
Two men living mirror image lives. Each seeking a second chance to get things right. Each wanting what the other has. 
 
As If is an existential farce about the road not taken. Surreal and slyly poignant, suffused with ironic melancholia, it is a parable for the twenty-first century everyman: a character trapped in reality’s hall of mirrors, endlessly searching for something to live for.

Isabel Waidner

Praise for As If

Wonderfully implausible and absurdly humorous, the latest novel from a Goldsmiths Prize-winner follows a rich tradition . . . As If is a great step forward, a maturing of Waidner's talent with no loss of the ...

A daring doppelganger puzzle . . . The Goldsmiths prize-winner’s fifth novel channels The Comedy of Errors by way of Samuel Beckett . . . the novel feels calculatedly aloof, the emancipatory glee of Waidner’s ...

Suffused with cosmic bafflement and dark humor. As If plays to these strengths, suggesting how a profusion of selves and their attendant possibilities lie hidden beneath the crust of a chosen identity . . . . Amid t ...

Wonderfully implausible and absurdly humorous, the latest novel from a Goldsmiths Prize-winner follows a rich tradition . . . As If is a great step forward, a maturing of Waidner's talent with no loss of the ...

A daring doppelganger puzzle . . . The Goldsmiths prize-winner’s fifth novel channels The Comedy of Errors by way of Samuel Beckett . . . the novel feels calculatedly aloof, the emancipatory glee of Waidner’s ...

Suffused with cosmic bafflement and dark humor. As If plays to these strengths, suggesting how a profusion of selves and their attendant possibilities lie hidden beneath the crust of a chosen identity . . . . Amid t ...

Wonderfully implausible and absurdly humorous, the latest novel from a Goldsmiths Prize-winner follows a rich tradition . . . As If is a great step forward, a maturing of Waidner's talent with no loss of the ...

A daring doppelganger puzzle . . . The Goldsmiths prize-winner’s fifth novel channels The Comedy of Errors by way of Samuel Beckett . . . the novel feels calculatedly aloof, the emancipatory glee of Waidner’s ...

Suffused with cosmic bafflement and dark humor. As If plays to these strengths, suggesting how a profusion of selves and their attendant possibilities lie hidden beneath the crust of a chosen identity . . . . Amid t ...

Books by Isabel Waidner

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