As If

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

Spectator

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

Guardian

One of Britain's most exciting writers

New Statesman, 'Best Fiction of 2026'

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

Daily Mail

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

Marie Claire

Every page is exhilarating

Deborah Levy, author of 'August Blue'

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

Peter Scalpello, author of 'Limbic'