As If - A Novel

By: Isabel Waidner

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026-06-16

A slender, sly, and profoundly intelligent novel about two strangers who swap lives to find new ones: a story of aspiration, ambition, and the possibility of radical newness.

Two men meet in an apartment in London. They are strangers to one another, 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 has just walked out on his. Lewis is a retired actor whose career never amounted to much beyond a bit part on a B-list sitcom; Korine has always dreamed of acting.

Slowly and then all at once, each begins to live on the other’s behalf. As Korine answers a casting call under Lewis's name, Lewis finds himself playing father to the other man’s son. Each day the strange ruse becomes truer and stranger, more entrenched. Plunged into an existential game of cat-and-mouse, pursuit and retreat, they find that acting might make it possible to, finally, live.

Isabel Waidner's As If is a wily, propulsive, and unusually wise novel about what happens when we fall out of our roles and attempt to make new ones: a tale of thwarted expectation, renewed ambition, and the possibility of escape. It is the story of two men, or maybe one: a love story and a ghost story both.