Author:  Waidner, Isabel 
The arts: general issues
Published on 26 February 2026 by Penguin Books Ltd (Hamish Hamilton Ltd) in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 192 pages
204 x 137 x 20 | 252g
'A brilliant, strange and tender exploration of what it is to fail, keep failing, and fail better' Sarah Bernstein, author of Study for Obedience 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.