by Naomi Klein
A finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award
Winner of the Women's Prize for Nonfiction
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | National Indie Bestseller
A New York Times notable book of 2023 | Vulture's #1 book of 2023
One of Slate's ten best books of 2023 | A Guardian best ideas book of 2023 | One of Time's ten best books of 2023 | Winner of the Pacific Northwest Book Award
"I've been raving about Naomi Klein's Doppelganger . . . I can't think of another text that better captures the berserk period we're living through." —Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times
"If I had to name a single book that makes sense of these last few dark years, it would be this one." —Katie Roiphe, The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you'd devoted your life to fighting against?
Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?
Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us—and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.
Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger asks: What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now—and an intellectual adventure story for our times.
A finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award
Winner of the Women's Prize for Nonfiction
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | National Indie Bestseller
A New York Times notable book of 2023 | Vulture's #1 book of 2023
One of Slate's ten best books of 2023 | A Guardian best ideas book of 2023 | One of Time's ten best books of 2023 | Winner of the Pacific Northwest Book Award
"I've been raving about Naomi Klein's Doppelganger . . . I can't think of another text that better captures the berserk period we're living through." —Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times
"If I had to name a single book that makes sense of these last few dark years, it would be this one." —Katie Roiphe, The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you'd devoted your life to fighting against?
Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?
Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us—and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.
Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger asks: What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now—and an intellectual adventure story for our times.
Reviews-
-
July 1, 2023
Klein's sociopolitical commentary takes a personal turn when she realizes she is being conflated with Naomi Wolf. While Wolf went from outspoken feminist to a regular on Steve Bannon's War Room, Klein has held her place on the democratic socialist, environmentally concerned left, which fights for "social policies that are inclusive and caring." Attempting to untangle the knot between seriousness and ridiculousness that defines both doppelg�ngers and conspiracy theories, Klein dives deep into the work of cultural figures such as Sigmund Freud, Philip Roth, and bell hooks, and she explores the many distortions and doubles we do battle with, from our bodies to our children to our online engagement. Simultaneously, she immerses herself in the narratives of the "the other side" espoused by Wolf. Klein's prose is tight and urgent, almost breathless, evoking both laughter and dismay and entrancingly matching the mounting frenzy of seeing your public self morph into someone else--or of watching conspiracy theories take hold, particularly in the destabilizing context of the pandemic. Braiding cultural criticism with a charitable attempt to humanize the "Other Naomi," Klein excavates legitimacy beneath sensational fears and exposes the failures of both sides of so many of the world's binaries. Some issues, such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, fit less snugly into her doppelg�nger theme than others, and the second half of the book is sometimes overstretched and repetitive. Still, the author's comprehensive and nuanced treatments of these issues are valuable and compelling in their own rights, and she shows us how to conduct conversations that resist binary thinking, distill the truths of dividing lines, and create a path to collective action on the pressing issues of our time that embraces the porousness of unnecessary borders. Rather than undermining Klein's work as a "serious" writer, this book reinforces it, to readers' benefit. A disarming and addictive call to solidarity.COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
-
July 31, 2023
In this striking meditation on contemporary political ideology, journalist Klein (This Changes Everything) explores unsettling resonances between her progressive beliefs and those of feminist turned right-wing conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf. Klein recounts her annoyance over the tendency for commentators to confuse her with Wolf (who like her is a Jewish woman known for writing “big-idea books”), and her alarm as her “doppelgänger” veered rightward during the Covid-19 pandemic, embracing antivaxxer and Stop the Steal conspiracy theories and becoming a frequent guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast. On this bleakly comic happenstance Klein hangs an analysis of right-wing populism, particularly the antivaxxer movement, as a warped mirror image of her own anticapitalist convictions. She goes on to find doppelgängers at the heart of other political ideologies, arguing, for example, that Nazism was the doppelgänger of a genocidal Western colonialism, and that Israeli Zionism views Palestinians as malignant doppelgängers much as antisemites view Jews. Klein’s writing is perceptive and intriguingly personal, but the doppelgänger theme begins to feel slightly overextended, with too many variations muddling the metaphor. However, 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. -
Starred review from August 1, 2023
Naomi Klein (On Fire, 2019) and Naomi Wolf share a profession and a first name but not much else. Wolf's right-leaning politics, punditry, and pseudo-expertise on everything from COVID vaccines to culture-war issues proved to be problematic for Klein when media consumers wrongly attributed Wolf's views to Klein. Wolf became, in Klein's words, her doppelg�nger, which she defines as a "person whom the world confuses with you but who is not actually you and yet can impact your life in profound ways." Although Klein explores this phenomenon through what could charitably be called a fixation with Wolf, her arguments transcend her personal experiences to probe more universal manifestations. Dualities exist throughout societies, spawning conspiracies that sow discord and distrust. In an era when identity theft is commonplace and emerging AI technology grows more sophisticated, the notion of such shadow presences is one that needs to be taken seriously. With alternative-fact-fueled rhetoric undermining essential institutions, Klein recognizes that an individual's vulnerability to malignant outside influences is symptomatic of widespread threats to cultural norms. Her provocative thought exercise illuminates the myriad ways taken-for-granted balances can be upended and calls for heightened awareness of the dangers of identity erosion on both large and small scales.COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
