Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

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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.


REVIEWS

"For nearly a quarter century, Klein’s work has offered clarifying conceptual frameworks to understand the workings of power . . . [Klein] has a canny knack for capturing the zeitgeist, crystalizing ideas attuned to a given historical moment that serve to galvanize activists as much as scholars." Nico Baumbach, Bookforum

"[
Doppelganger is] a very, very good book. The premise . . . An ambitious, wide-ranging exploration of this very frightening moment of polycrisis and systemic failure . . .Klein has produced a first-rate literary work just as much as this is a superb philosophical and political tome . . . An essential read." Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic

“This story of mistaken identity would on its own be gripping and revealing enough, both as a psychological study and for its explorations of the double in art and history, the disorienting effects of social media, and the queasy feeling of looking into a distorted mirror. But the larger subject of 
Doppelganger turns out to be a far more complex and consequential confusion . . . A uniquely astute account of the scrambled political formations that have come out of the pandemic.” Laura Marsh, The New Republic

PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 978-1802061956
Pages: 416