Doppelganger

A Trip into the Mirror World

By: Naomi Klein

Narrated by: Naomi Klein

Length: 14 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

#1 NATIONAL BESTELLER

Shortlisted for the 2024 Writers' Prize

A New York Times Notable Book of 2023 • Vulture’s #1 Best Book of the Year • The Globe and Mail • Esquire • The Guardian • CBC • TIME • The Boston Globe • Harpers’ Bazaar • Slate • Electric Lit

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, 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 similar enough to her own that many people confused her for the other. For a vertiginous moment, she lost her bearings. And then she got interested, in a reality that seems to be warping and doubling like a digital hall of mirrors. It’s happening in our politics as New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers find common cause with fire-breathing far right propagandists (all in the name of protecting “the children”). It’s happening in our culture as AI gobbles up music, paintings, fiction and everything in between and spits out imitations that threaten to overtake the originals. And it’s happening to many of us as individuals as we create digital doubles of ourselves, filtered and curated just so for all the other duplicates to see.

An award-winning journalist, bestselling author, public intellectual and activist, Naomi Klein writes books that orient us in our time. She has offered essential accounts of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Now, as liberal democracies teeter on the edge, Klein takes aim at absurdist authoritarianism, using a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the doubles that haunt us. Part tragicomic memoir, part chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Doppelganger invites readers on a wild ride, smashing through the mirror world, charting a path beyond despair towards true solidarity.

©2023 Knopf (P)2023 Knopf Canada

Critic reviews

“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

“On her highbrow romp through this disturbing underworld, Klein’s writing is clear, dynamic, ruthlessly honest, imbued with a rare integrity. She brings unusual rigor to her examinations of herself, including her flaws. She is that nearly extinct breed of activist: one who never stops questioning orthodoxies and interrogating her own beliefs. Doppelganger showcases her superb ability to cut through clichés and received ideas, as well as intellectual conventions. . . . There is something hopeful in this project, in its sheer intellectual ambition and range, its effort to pick apart and decipher the absurdities and ironies of our political derangement, which almost no other writer could pull off. 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

"Doppelganger is an in-depth critique of what late-stage capitalism hath wrought. . . . It’s also much more. Klein wields her polymathic expertise like a sword, slicing through the mirror world via political theory; tech anxiety; literary criticism; and films famous and obscure. . . . You can’t help but be invigorated by Klein’s intellectual synthesis and dexterity, even as her gimlet eye makes you want to run screaming into the night. . . . Timely and timeless, a work in a grand tradition."—Los Angeles Times

Fascinating

Clever device for a wide ranging critique of fact-free commentary and the importance of clear-eyed introspection

Excellent!

Wish all books were so insightful, so intelligent, so forward thinking. Thank you, Naomi, for being you, from a huge fan.

Excellent exploration of our current political environment

I didn’t agree with every word, but this book does an excellent job of explaining how we ended up in this era of hyper-partisanship and what those of us on the left can borrow from MAGA conservatives to win both the battle and the war. Using Wolf as the stand-in for the average radicalized individual was so, so smart. Every progressive and leftist (and even liberal, even though that’s become a bit of a dirty word on the left, including in this book), should read this book, and heed its advice.

The variety and intensity that Naomi Klein describes over time.

I liked that Naomi Klein didn’t just focus on her problems with Naomi Wolfe’s writings and oral presentations but managed to broaden it to other topics of interest to her.

Interesting story hurt by far left propaganda

While I found the story of the two Naomi’s interesting, it went off track with far left propaganda in the second half of the book. I knew of the author’s controversial political opinions before listening, so I wasn’t expecting something balanced, but unfortunately she veered off into crazy town.