Rob Doyle the Irish author’s fictional novel, in episode one  we get a perky book-world send ups and downs of creative life. It takes the form of a vertiginous hall of mirrors on gazillion-selling Dublin, novelist Ren Duka, who has unexpected, runaway international success with a prolific series of auto fictional novels. What begins as a playful satire on literary ambition and the chaos of our times expands into a dazzling, polyphonic odyssey that challenges the border between fiction and reality.

As the Ren Duka novels race outwards in widening circles of influence, we encounter Dina Tatangelo, cult novelist of the New York underworld; a Japanese manga artist whose work eerily affects his family life; a grizzled Dublin taxi driver who just might ferry his passengers between worlds; a film star facing public disgrace; and Rob Doyle, an author  enduring a psychic and ontological crisis.

Cameo is at once a metaphysical architecture of the imagination, a human comedy full of unruly passions, and a self-portrait across multiple dimensions.

Cameo by Rob Doyle, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 280 pages.