As If - In Conversation with Isabel Waidner

Join us in conversation with Isabel Waidner on their latest novel: As If.

As If follows two characters as they swerve onto the road not taken – a deeply empathetic, tragicomic novel that reckons with the absurdity of modern lives

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.

‘audacious and enchanting’ - Yiyun Li

‘Every page is exhilarating’ - Deborah Levy

‘The writer everyone is talking about…Their explosive sensibility and style are as far removed from mediocre prose and middle-class manners as you can imagine’ – Bernardine Evaristo

‘Reading Waidner is like plugging into an electric socket of language and ideas’ - Guardian

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.