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

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

Reading Waidner is like plugging into an electric socket of language and ideas

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, author of 'Girl, Woman, Other'

Waidner pushes form to make us see the world around us in new ways, and perhaps even for the first time

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

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

Reading Waidner is like plugging into an electric socket of language and ideas

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

Waidner pushes form to make us see the world around us in new ways, and perhaps even for the first time

Reading Waidner is like plugging into an electric socket of language and ideas

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

Waidner pushes form to make us see the world around us in new ways, and perhaps even for the first time

Reading Waidner is like plugging into an electric socket of language and ideas

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

Waidner pushes form to make us see the world around us in new ways, and perhaps even for the first time

Books by Isabel Waidner

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter