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Cameo
Cameo is the life story of invented Irish novelist Ren Duka, who has unexpected, runaway international success with a prolific series of autofictional 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.
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.
288 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 22, 2026
About the author
Rob Doyle
26 books152 followersRob Doyle’s first novel, Here Are the Young Men, is published by Bloomsbury, and was chosen as a book of the year by The Irish Times, Sunday Times, Sunday Business Post, and Independent. It was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Newcomer of the Year. His second book, This Is the Ritual, will be published in January 2016 (Bloomsbury / Lilliput). Rob’s fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in The Dublin Review, The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, Sunday Times, Sunday Business Post, Gorse, Dalkey Archive’s Best European Fiction 2016 and elsewhere.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
December 1, 2025
I enjoyed Doyle’s debut, loved his second book, then soured on his work circa Threshold, which I found unpleasant to read and disingenuous in its use of the conventions of autofiction – which, to some extent, Cameo also is. There’s no denying, though, that this is an immensely fun and well-crafted book, as well as being exactly the sort of thing I can’t resist: a metafictional series of stories inside stories, with subtle elements of the strange and uncanny. (That cover, all frames within frames, is perfect for it.) Happily, it’s most similar to This is the Ritual, with its focus on a group of fictitious writers, their books, and how the two loop into each other. Loved the rhythm of this; it just really works.
I received an advance review copy of Cameo from the publisher through NetGalley.
I received an advance review copy of Cameo from the publisher through NetGalley.
May 2, 2026
A both wise and dear friend told me this was Rob Doyle at the peak of his powers, and by god did this not disappoint. What an incredible journey into the Ren Duka-verse
March 1, 2026
Rob Doyle really is that bitch.
March 11, 2026
Yes that was a lot of fun.
April 27, 2026
Mixed feelings. Wild ride and very funny, love a story within a story within a story within a story.
Very sure I am not the demographic for this book which is why I feel like I can't review properly.
Very sure I am not the demographic for this book which is why I feel like I can't review properly.
February 5, 2026
Cameo / Rob Doyle
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
~ The essence of the Ren Duka cycle is panache, if you're asking me. Hidden depths and an intangible poignancy… ~
This is my first Rob Doyle since Here Are The Young Men, and my word. It’s so original, it’s so mind bending, it’s just so good. NGL, half the time I was asking WTF is this? But in saying that the pages turned quick!
You’re brought through a series of darkness, moral and political questionability, you clearly want to know where does Ren Duka stand? What does he really believe? It’s as though throughout all these questions we keep getting guided through.
The stories being interconnected, some more obvious than others, bring around the same core values from different stances. The aforementioned Cameo was brilliant. It lands where it could have gone awry.
I don’t care if I missed the point as I’m taking this as what it is. Nothing is there for the sake of it, it carries legit space to spur in. This has heart. This has soul.
It has that feeling though of a short story collection, but totally works where it shouldn’t. As they say, End it with the Laughter.
TBR Pile: Graig
Bought from: Bookstation Carlow - 19/01/26
Read: 04/02/26 - 05/02/26
Release Date: 22/01/26
ISBN: 9781399631082
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
~ The essence of the Ren Duka cycle is panache, if you're asking me. Hidden depths and an intangible poignancy… ~
This is my first Rob Doyle since Here Are The Young Men, and my word. It’s so original, it’s so mind bending, it’s just so good. NGL, half the time I was asking WTF is this? But in saying that the pages turned quick!
You’re brought through a series of darkness, moral and political questionability, you clearly want to know where does Ren Duka stand? What does he really believe? It’s as though throughout all these questions we keep getting guided through.
The stories being interconnected, some more obvious than others, bring around the same core values from different stances. The aforementioned Cameo was brilliant. It lands where it could have gone awry.
I don’t care if I missed the point as I’m taking this as what it is. Nothing is there for the sake of it, it carries legit space to spur in. This has heart. This has soul.
It has that feeling though of a short story collection, but totally works where it shouldn’t. As they say, End it with the Laughter.
TBR Pile: Graig
Bought from: Bookstation Carlow - 19/01/26
Read: 04/02/26 - 05/02/26
Release Date: 22/01/26
ISBN: 9781399631082
May 14, 2026
rob doyle writes with a corrosive passion that i’ve never experienced before. a book so meta that the very conception of all intertwining narratives is an overwhelming jumble, and yet you never feel out of place, confused by your placement. it’s unapologetic and vitriolic in its essence, a wonderful exploration of the novelist’s malignant psyche.
Read
January 22, 2026REN DUKA
KUN DERA
KUN DERA
Read
March 3, 2026By some margin Doyle's oddest novel to date, certainty his most original, and possibly his best. It's a combination of numerous strands which will sound like complete nonsense when I attempt to describe them, but nevertheless hold together better than you'd think: a summary and discussion of the various auto fictional novels of the fictional author Ren Duka, commentary by various people in some way related to him, and excerpts from novels that may or may not relate to him in some strange way including a seemingly autobiographical novel and also an account of a taxi driver in a futuristic dystopian Dublin. It is spill-your-coffee-all-over-your-trousers-funny, gleefully offensive and very arch. I'm not sure I really got it as a novel: it's very meta and borderline masturbatory, but despite its formal daring and unique structure it is still mostly a rollicking good read. A rare example of something elevated and exceedingly puerile at the same time.
Towards the end, the summaries of the novels lose a bit of steam, perhaps an audacious form that slightly pushed further than it needed to be. The end is somewhat of a head scratcher too: when I finished this novel I wasn't entirely sure what Doyle intended to me to think, other than 'wow, that boy can surely write.'
Towards the end, the summaries of the novels lose a bit of steam, perhaps an audacious form that slightly pushed further than it needed to be. The end is somewhat of a head scratcher too: when I finished this novel I wasn't entirely sure what Doyle intended to me to think, other than 'wow, that boy can surely write.'
June 8, 2026
This was by some stretch the most self-indulgent novel I’ve ever read. Metaphysical qualities abound, including the author writing himself into the story as a minor character in the later part of the book. Oddly enough, I had just finished Martin Amis’ Money, another book in which the author makes a cameo appearance, albeit a more memorable one.
Cameo was a literary Russian nest of dolls. Every time I opened the book I had to take a minute to think… “At what level of reality am I currently at?…. How many positions removed from the real-life Doyle is the current protagonist placed?“. Near the end of the book I often felt that the meaning of what I was reading was just ever so slightly beyond my reach and if I took a minute to slow down and consider it, I’d understand everything clearly, but to tell the truth, by then I didn’t much care anymore.
At least Doyle’s a good writer that can reliably turn a phrase, and is not above social commentary. I especially liked his calling out of cancel culture: “Contrarian artists who crave provocation in an age of performance ethics”.
The primary protagonist in this literary hall of mirrors is Ren Duka, and he is handed his own death sentence via a brain tumor just as his own (also fictional) author is discovering he has less than a month to live with a similar affliction. I have decided that if Rob Doyle is also discovered to have a brain tumor, all this cleverness for cleverness’s sake is forgiven and this is indeed a five-star novel.
***
“feeling backed into a corner by his heterosexual, white, cis gendered identity in a period when the combination amounts to a ‘royal flush of disrepute’, Ren conducts a probe on his genealogy in hopes of finding some mitigating factor. To his surprise, the research throws up inconclusive, but strong suggestions of a distant ancestor from Algeria. One of his peasant, forebears, he speculates, may have been impregnated by an Algerian pirate when the corsairs landed on Southwest Cork in the 17th century, kidnapping hundreds of villagers to be sold as slaves. “I’m a fucking Raghead“ he exclaims in front of his laptop. Rens delight in his discovery is huge. In an instant he has gone from being the most unfashionable entity on the planet to someone with a claim, however, tenuous, to immunity granting victim status. Inwardly he already feels different.”
“47 years old. Driving a taxi six nights a week, he’d begun to feel that the city was becoming foreign, replaced before his eyes, everything familiar leeched away. But then he’d catch himself in the loop of such thoughts, and realize that no, he was the one becoming foreign, strange, old. Dublin was what it had always been – mutating, churning – and now it was beginning to excrete him.”
“ the problem with Augustine‘s book, he reflects, and with all such confessions by men who ran wild in their youth, and now preach continence, is that he wrote it at the stage in life when such ostensibly moral choices make themselves – when the apparent sacrifice is hardly a sacrifice at all.”
Cameo was a literary Russian nest of dolls. Every time I opened the book I had to take a minute to think… “At what level of reality am I currently at?…. How many positions removed from the real-life Doyle is the current protagonist placed?“. Near the end of the book I often felt that the meaning of what I was reading was just ever so slightly beyond my reach and if I took a minute to slow down and consider it, I’d understand everything clearly, but to tell the truth, by then I didn’t much care anymore.
At least Doyle’s a good writer that can reliably turn a phrase, and is not above social commentary. I especially liked his calling out of cancel culture: “Contrarian artists who crave provocation in an age of performance ethics”.
The primary protagonist in this literary hall of mirrors is Ren Duka, and he is handed his own death sentence via a brain tumor just as his own (also fictional) author is discovering he has less than a month to live with a similar affliction. I have decided that if Rob Doyle is also discovered to have a brain tumor, all this cleverness for cleverness’s sake is forgiven and this is indeed a five-star novel.
***
“feeling backed into a corner by his heterosexual, white, cis gendered identity in a period when the combination amounts to a ‘royal flush of disrepute’, Ren conducts a probe on his genealogy in hopes of finding some mitigating factor. To his surprise, the research throws up inconclusive, but strong suggestions of a distant ancestor from Algeria. One of his peasant, forebears, he speculates, may have been impregnated by an Algerian pirate when the corsairs landed on Southwest Cork in the 17th century, kidnapping hundreds of villagers to be sold as slaves. “I’m a fucking Raghead“ he exclaims in front of his laptop. Rens delight in his discovery is huge. In an instant he has gone from being the most unfashionable entity on the planet to someone with a claim, however, tenuous, to immunity granting victim status. Inwardly he already feels different.”
“47 years old. Driving a taxi six nights a week, he’d begun to feel that the city was becoming foreign, replaced before his eyes, everything familiar leeched away. But then he’d catch himself in the loop of such thoughts, and realize that no, he was the one becoming foreign, strange, old. Dublin was what it had always been – mutating, churning – and now it was beginning to excrete him.”
“ the problem with Augustine‘s book, he reflects, and with all such confessions by men who ran wild in their youth, and now preach continence, is that he wrote it at the stage in life when such ostensibly moral choices make themselves – when the apparent sacrifice is hardly a sacrifice at all.”
February 15, 2026
Yeah, no. I was looking forward to this, but unfortunately it's going on the did not finish pile. It will also be relegated to the will never finish bin. Necrophilia with mutilated corpses is not my thing. If it's not yours either then this is probably not the book for you. And if it is, well, you need help. Very disappointing offering from the sick, sick mind of a brilliant writer. Sigh.
April 2, 2026
i read that doyle is a big houellebecq fanboy / says hes super influential on his writing which is funny cos he is so much more skilled and interesting in every way than houellebecq. LOVED this i love the meta layers and the bold weird narrative and form choices. swing big! be audacious!
April 25, 2026
This was highly compelling and I read it unusually fast.
It made me genuinely laugh as well as feel disturbed and uncomfortable. There were even a few moments of poignancy. Initially sceptical, I came to admire Doyle's metafictional conceits. I would advise the reader not to bother trying to make sense of that aspect of the novel and to simply float downstream on it, letting it wash over them (I say the same for reading Burroughs, although Doyle is much lighter work).
Cameo was almost a collection of very different short stories. My favourites included the darkly comic episode involving Islamic State reminiscent of Vonnegut's 'Mother Night' and the gradually unfolding biography of a disturbed adolescent guitarist for a short-lived avant-garde punk band, whose fascistic ideals are ambiguously ironic. This guitarist is of course Ren Duka, who also takes the role of ISIS captive/propagandist, controversial novelist and time traveller to the Third Reich. Ren Duka is the principal returning protagonist, although there are intermissions exploring the perspectives of a disgraced gay actor, a Japanese manga artist, a Dublin taxi driver, the author himself and a New York no-wave Catholic junkie writer. All this ultimately culminates in a bizarre nondualist metaphysical climax.
'Cameo' also examined the act of writing itself, both prosaically and exotically; writing is presented almost as an occult act, adjacent to feverish insanity - which reminded me of the film version of 'Naked Lunch' (not the book itself) in a good way.
This novel did contain a lot of unpleasantness - a lot of addiction and suicide, some paedophilia (not depicted), some necrophilia (depicted), sex with religious figures and a lot of deranged moral ideas, almost resembling a litany of intrusive thoughts. This is still light compared to the aforementioned 'Naked Lunch' (the novel, not the film) where all of that happens on one page. Unpleasantness isn't a bad thing though; it's important to confront.
Finally, I must credit Doyle for writing about the 21st Century zeitgeist in a mostly convincing way, which I perceive to be quite challenging. He writes about ketamine, accelerationism and the Internet without sounding like a knock-off Mark Fisher, he satirises 'woke' politics and cancel-culture without sounding like a talking head from The Spectator. I also liked the passing illustration of 'London creatives.'
Ultimately a very good novel relatively hot off the press.
It made me genuinely laugh as well as feel disturbed and uncomfortable. There were even a few moments of poignancy. Initially sceptical, I came to admire Doyle's metafictional conceits. I would advise the reader not to bother trying to make sense of that aspect of the novel and to simply float downstream on it, letting it wash over them (I say the same for reading Burroughs, although Doyle is much lighter work).
Cameo was almost a collection of very different short stories. My favourites included the darkly comic episode involving Islamic State reminiscent of Vonnegut's 'Mother Night' and the gradually unfolding biography of a disturbed adolescent guitarist for a short-lived avant-garde punk band, whose fascistic ideals are ambiguously ironic. This guitarist is of course Ren Duka, who also takes the role of ISIS captive/propagandist, controversial novelist and time traveller to the Third Reich. Ren Duka is the principal returning protagonist, although there are intermissions exploring the perspectives of a disgraced gay actor, a Japanese manga artist, a Dublin taxi driver, the author himself and a New York no-wave Catholic junkie writer. All this ultimately culminates in a bizarre nondualist metaphysical climax.
'Cameo' also examined the act of writing itself, both prosaically and exotically; writing is presented almost as an occult act, adjacent to feverish insanity - which reminded me of the film version of 'Naked Lunch' (not the book itself) in a good way.
This novel did contain a lot of unpleasantness - a lot of addiction and suicide, some paedophilia (not depicted), some necrophilia (depicted), sex with religious figures and a lot of deranged moral ideas, almost resembling a litany of intrusive thoughts. This is still light compared to the aforementioned 'Naked Lunch' (the novel, not the film) where all of that happens on one page. Unpleasantness isn't a bad thing though; it's important to confront.
Finally, I must credit Doyle for writing about the 21st Century zeitgeist in a mostly convincing way, which I perceive to be quite challenging. He writes about ketamine, accelerationism and the Internet without sounding like a knock-off Mark Fisher, he satirises 'woke' politics and cancel-culture without sounding like a talking head from The Spectator. I also liked the passing illustration of 'London creatives.'
Ultimately a very good novel relatively hot off the press.
March 8, 2026
"Cameo" is Rob Doyle's funniest book to date, and perhaps his most poignant. It's also his most aggressively meta, wherein a character called Ren Duka pens a series of semi-autobiographical novels. Though some are close to his own life, others stray into the more surreal. We are given a series of often ribald synopses of these novels, along with titbits from the life of Ren Duka himself. The novels by Ren Duka often contain stories within the story, penned by the fictitious version of Ren Duka. Oh, and there's a character called Rob Doyle who makes a *cameo* as well.
The novel wears its influences on its sleeve; an epigraph from Borges is a nod to the influence of that great writer on this work. One minor gripe in this area is that a later chapter is heavily indebted to Gaspar Noé's "Enter the Void" in a manner that to me felt a bit derivative, or perhaps a reminder of how overwhelming that movie is in itself.
Overall, this is a fast ride that riffs on authorship, cancel culture, identity, wasted youth and perhaps life itself as someone who tries to mirror life in art. Well worth a look.
The novel wears its influences on its sleeve; an epigraph from Borges is a nod to the influence of that great writer on this work. One minor gripe in this area is that a later chapter is heavily indebted to Gaspar Noé's "Enter the Void" in a manner that to me felt a bit derivative, or perhaps a reminder of how overwhelming that movie is in itself.
Overall, this is a fast ride that riffs on authorship, cancel culture, identity, wasted youth and perhaps life itself as someone who tries to mirror life in art. Well worth a look.
April 13, 2026
This book has all the elements I usually like. Stories within stories. Strange artists doing mysterious work with hidden messages. Questions about what is real. And yet it didn’t work. It was full of cliches but seemed to be trying to convince us all along how original it all was. Morose narrators snorting coke at techno clubs (yes, he called it techno) while musing on the futility of life. The writer protagonist who somehow has endless time for orgies and benders and periodic retreats to seaside retreats to dry out, all the while implying how much more sophisticated he is than all the rest of us bu his clear eyed understanding of the TRUTH. Yeah yeah, I’m sure this is all part of the game. The books seems set up to provide plausible deniability against all criticisms by saying “it’s all satire.” But if it’s satire, what is it satirizing and why should we care? What it did have going for it was one cool section about a manga artist. And it was a pretty easy read, for whatever that’s worth.
May 30, 2026
"Hi everyone. My name's George. And I'm addicted to meta-fictional maladaptive day-dreaming. [...] No, Rob. I haven't written any of it down. That would be completely self-indulgent and insane."
I really thought this would be a hit for me. A metaphysical winking satire on the current prevalence of fetid auto-fiction novels. However, what I imagined to be a set of wheels within wheels quickly revealed itself to be little more than a donut. With the hole in the middle being where the meaning should have gone.
The writing is very readable. The pace is highly moreish. And the premise is great fun. But come a third the novel starts to veer into self-parody and never quite gets back on track. Instead sticking to saying something specific about fiction and the industry, it tries to say everything about everything, and as a result ends with a mutter of nothing.
I really thought this would be a hit for me. A metaphysical winking satire on the current prevalence of fetid auto-fiction novels. However, what I imagined to be a set of wheels within wheels quickly revealed itself to be little more than a donut. With the hole in the middle being where the meaning should have gone.
The writing is very readable. The pace is highly moreish. And the premise is great fun. But come a third the novel starts to veer into self-parody and never quite gets back on track. Instead sticking to saying something specific about fiction and the industry, it tries to say everything about everything, and as a result ends with a mutter of nothing.
February 6, 2026
I can't really write a review of this without being paid. It's absolutely brilliant. Forces the contemporary reader, though darkness, brutality and extreme moral and political transgressions to ask and moralise about the author itself. What are his stances? Doyle knew this would be the response of the contemporary fiction reader with his pointed and directional transgressions. And the novel explodes this question from a vast array of angles, interlocking in narratives that are entirely different yet universal, circling outward. But it also answers it, literally, when Rob Doyle - the author that has slapped and insulted and delighted and pushed and pushed us - makes a Cameo. That moment, even though it is somewhat spoiled by the dust jacket, was a total stroke of genius art.
Aside from the transgressive elements, the novel has a beating heart and a complex, interlocking and hefty soul. The violences help this, making room for the light and the vulnerability of the human condition in horrific and absolute contrasts. This is my first Booker prediction of the year.
Btw I had the most awful and terrifying dreams reading this.
Aside from the transgressive elements, the novel has a beating heart and a complex, interlocking and hefty soul. The violences help this, making room for the light and the vulnerability of the human condition in horrific and absolute contrasts. This is my first Booker prediction of the year.
Btw I had the most awful and terrifying dreams reading this.
June 30, 2026
9
Cameo is an extraordinarily entertaining satire, with some of the funniest line-by-line writing I have read in a very long time. A postmodern, metafictional tale of a cult Irish novelist and the myriad people in his wake, this novel is mind-bending and hugely enjoyable. Doyle remains a master of sugaring the pill, coating devastating insight with enough humour that the true meaning reveals itself gradually over time. The ending of the novel is a pleasantly surprising twist, too. Cameo may not possess the psychological or philosophical depth of Threshold, but when a novel is this fun to read, who needs depth?
Cameo is an extraordinarily entertaining satire, with some of the funniest line-by-line writing I have read in a very long time. A postmodern, metafictional tale of a cult Irish novelist and the myriad people in his wake, this novel is mind-bending and hugely enjoyable. Doyle remains a master of sugaring the pill, coating devastating insight with enough humour that the true meaning reveals itself gradually over time. The ending of the novel is a pleasantly surprising twist, too. Cameo may not possess the psychological or philosophical depth of Threshold, but when a novel is this fun to read, who needs depth?
May 14, 2026
Wow. This book genuinely blew me away. Cameo confirms to me that contrary to its reported decline from a commercial, corporate perspective, literature is very much alive, living and indeed ascending, and remains (along with other forms of art) our best chance at communicating and experiencing something of the ineffable wonder of life. Thanks to the author for writing this beautifully poignant masterpiece and for reinvigorating my imagination in all its universes.
Read
February 2, 2026I had no expectations when I started Cameo as I am not familiar with Rob Doyle's work. Unfortunately I almost DNFed it on a number of occasions, but I persisted as I was convinced there was something beyond my grasp that I would eventually understand. But no there wasn't. I did read to the end but I'm afraid Cameo was just not for me.
March 19, 2026
Rob Doyle is the type of person I would hate to get stuck talking to at a party. Very difficult to take a book seriously when the descriptions of sex are so pornographic and male…. This book thinks it’s a lot more intelligent than it is, it’s like he’s trying really hard to be a mad genius but it’s over written and gets cumbersome halfway through
April 20, 2026
First Rob Doyle novel, picked it up because I was in easons and I'd read a sample in Tolka. Absolutely loved it, loved getting lost in this increasingly intricate web of narrators, stories and perspectives.
June 23, 2025
Sublime
Review of advance copy received from Author
Fantastic. Doyle’s best work yet.
February 9, 2026
just fine
February 13, 2026
no one is doing it quite like rob doyle is doing it
February 14, 2026
Fucking hell that was amazing. Not sure what to say, need to read more of Doyle’s stuff
February 17, 2026
The best Roberto Bolano novel since 2666.
Read
May 19, 2026diverting
June 15, 2026
Now can we get one or two of these Ren Duka novels published??
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews