In this larky autofiction, the ups and downs of creative life are cartoonishly dramatised as the writer becomes an action hero

Rob Doyle’s previous novel, Threshold, took the form of a blackly comic travelogue narrated by an Irish writer named Rob. In one episode before Rob becomes an author, we see him as a sexually pent-up teacher abroad, masturbating over an essay he’s marking. That the scene is an echo of one in Michel Houellebecq’s Atomised (once named by Doyle as the best book from the past 40 years) hardly lessens our discomfort, and it’s hard not to feel that our unease is precisely the point. “Frankly, a lot of my life has been disastrous,” he once told an interviewer – which might not be quite as self-deprecating as it sounds, given that Doyle has also argued that “great literature” is born of “abjection” not “glory”.

The autofictional game-playing continues in his new novel, Cameo, but instead of self-abasing display, we get a perky book-world send-up for the culture war era, cartoonishly dramatising the ups and downs of creative life. It takes the form of a vertiginous hall of mirrors centred on gazillion-selling Dublin novelist Ren Duka, renowned for a long novel cycle drawn on his own life, the summaries of which comprise the bulk of the book we’re reading. Duka’s work isn’t autofiction à la Knausgård: hardly deskbound, still less under the yoke of domesticity, he leads a jet-set life of peril, mixing with drug dealers, terrorists, spies, and eventually serving time for tax evasion before he develops a crack habit, a penchant for threesomes in Paris and – perhaps least likely of all – returns to his long-forsaken Catholicism.

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© Photograph: Bernard Roche/Katie Freeney

© Photograph: Bernard Roche/Katie Freeney

© Photograph: Bernard Roche/Katie Freeney

As the Booker prize-winning author prepares to publish his final novel at 80, we assess his finest work

Duffy is the first in a series of crime novels about a bisexual private eye that Barnes published under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. It came out the same year as Barnes’s debut novel proper, Metroland, but where that took seven years to write, this took 10 days. Not that it shows: this “refreshingly nasty” (as Barnes’s friend Martin Amis put it) crime caper is beguilingly well written, with passages that display all of Barnes’s perception and wit. The plot of reverse blackmail and the shocking climax only add to the fun.
Sample line “Two in the morning is when sounds travel for ever, when a sticky window makes a soft squeak and three Panda cars hear it from miles away.”

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© Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

© Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

© Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Over the past decade Josef Fares has made a name for himself in the video games industry not only due to his unique personality, but thanks to the creator’s constant push towards innovating in the co-op space, with each successive project receiving higher praise than the last. While Fares and Hazelight Studios’ latest release Split Fiction continues to find a growing audience, the team’s previous project – It Takes Two – is nearing another massive sales milestone.

In an interview conducted by Christopher Dring of TheGameBusiness, Hazelight Studios CEO Josef Fares spoke on a wide range of topics including 2025’s GOTY winner Clair Obscur: Expedition 33; the state of the industry, generative AI and more.

In discussing Hazelight’s last game prior to Split Fiction – It Takes Two – Fares revealed that the 2021 game of the year winner is continuing to sell millions of copies, confirming that the co-op title is now closing in on hitting 27 million copies sold.

While an incredible achievement in its own right, as with many of Hazelight’s games, It Takes Two included a friends pass allowing you to play through the whole game online with a friend without them needing to own a copy. This means that at this point over 50 million people have experienced the game.

Considering the fact that the game is set to receive an adaptation of some kind at some point (though we have heard little from the project since its initial announcement), It Takes Two will likely continue to sell well for many more years.

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KitGuru says: What did you think of It Takes Two? How does it compare to the rest of Josef Fares’ output? Will Split Fiction manage to reach similar heights? Let us know down below.

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