Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World

Author(s): Naomi Klein

Politics | The Writers' Prize short list 2024 (formerly The Folio Prize) | 2024 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction | 2024 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction — short list | Biography and Memoir

A personal trip into the uncanny Mirror World of our polarised culture, from the international bestselling author of The Shock Doctrine. What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired a double? Someone almost like you, and yet not you at all?


When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different, harmful views, was getting chronically mistaken for her, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously. Then suddenly it wasn't. She started to find herself grappling with a distorted sense of reality, becoming obsessed with reading the threats on social media, the endlessly scrolling insults from the followers of her doppelganger. Why had her shadowy other gone down such an extreme path? Why was identity - all we have to meet the world - so unstable?


To find out, Klein decided to follow her double into a bizarre, uncanny mirror world- one of conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers and demagogue hucksters, where soft-focus wellness influencers make common cause with fire-breathing far right propagandists (all in the name of protecting 'the children'). In doing so, she lifts the lid on our own culture during this surreal moment in history, as we turn ourselves into polished virtual brands, publicly shame our enemies, watch as deep fakes proliferate and whole nations flip from democracy to something far more sinister.


This is a book for our age and for all of us; a deadly serious dark comedy which invites us to view our reflections in the looking glass. It's for anyone who has lost hours down an internet rabbit hole, who wonders why our politics has become so fatally warped, and who wants a way out of our collective vertigo and back to fighting for what really matters.

Review: This book is as foreboding as a guide through the maze of mirrors of the modern right should be. But it's not only that: Naomi Klein has made Doppelganger gripping and scintillating, too. The result is a reckoning with the present moment that's as insightful as all Klein's indispensable work, and as suspenseful as a novel. -- China Mieville
Naomi Klein never disappoints. Doppelganger swirls through the bewildering ideas of the ultra-right that often appear as a distorted mirror of left struggle and strategy. With her always incisive analysis of the systems and structures linked to global capitalism, Klein now fiercely and brilliantly urges that our justice movements be prepared to follow the quest for new meaning into dimensions where we might least expect to find it: in injury and vulnerability. -- Angela Y. Davis
I finished this book and nearly cried with relief, Klein gave me the gift of being calm. She explores and diagnoses with empathy, warmth and searing precision the confusion and utter madness of what it is to be alive right now. This is a big book with big ideas which poses the most direct questions for our times. Everyone needs to read it as a matter of urgency. -- Sheena Patel
This will be remembered as Naomi Klein's true master work: the ultimate expression of our collective crisis, told through the necessarily subjective lens of human experience ... With the benefit of Naomi Klein's journey through the crucible of self-annihilation, we can understand everything from Covid conspiracies to climate denialism in a new light. A triumph. -- Douglas Rushkoff
Once a decade, Naomi Klein writes a book that prompts us to completely rethink the moment we're in. If you want to understand where we are now - and how to find our way back to sanity - you have to read this totally brilliant book. -- Johann Hari
If you want to make sense of a world upside-down, this staggering masterpiece will show you how - and then it blazes a path to a more loving and caring future. -- V (formerly Eve Ensler), author of Reckoning and The Vagina Monologues
Klein's prose is tight and urgent ... evoking both laughter and dismay and entrancingly matching the mounting frenzy of seeing your public self morph into someone else ... [Klein's] comprehensive and nuanced treatments of these issues are valuable and compelling ... A disarming and addictive call to solidarity. * Kirkus *
[A] striking meditation . . . Klein's writing is perceptive and intriguingly personal . . . By articulating such an expansive view of the uncanny, Klein's mesmerizing narrative reflects the unique anxieties and modes of analysis that have come to dominate the online era. Like Klein's previous books, it's a definitive signpost of the times. * Publishers Weekly *


 


 


Author Biography: Born in Montreal in 1970, Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and author of the international bestseller No Logo, which was shortlisted for the Guardian first book award. Translated into twenty-five languages, No Logo was called "a movement bible" and placed Naomi Klein at the vanguard of a new wave of considering globalisation and corporations. In Blank is Beautiful, Klein will once again revolutionize our way of thinking.Naomi Klein writes an internationally syndicated column for the Guardian and her articles appear in numerous publications, including The Nation, The New Statesman, Newsweek International, the New York Times and the Village Voice. A collection of her work, titled Fences and Windows- Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate, was published in October 2002. For the past six years, Klein has travelled throughout North America, Asia, Latin America and Europe, tracking the rise of anticorporate activism. She is a frequent media commentator and university guest lecturer and was a Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics. Her latest book is The Shock Doctrine- The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Penguin, 2007).

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Product Information

Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Nonfiction 2024

General Fields

  • : 9780241621318
  • : Penguin UK
  • : Allen Lane
  • : 700.0
  • : 01 March 2023
  • : 4 Centimeters X 15.3 Centimeters X 23.4 Centimeters
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Naomi Klein
  • : Paperback
  • : English
  • : 302.231092
  • : 416
  • : JFHC