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Doppelganger

A Trip into the Mirror World

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Doppelganger

By: Naomi Klein
Narrated by: Naomi Klein
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

*WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION*

*THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*
*A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, AND PROSPECT*

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.

‘If I had to name a single book that makes sense of these last few dark years, it would be this one’ New York Times

‘A deeply compelling read … urgent and necessary’ Evening Standard
Naomi Klein, author of era-defining bestsellers, The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything and No Logo, is back with her most compulsive and personal book yet: a revelatory journey into the mirror world of our polarised age


©2023 Naomi Klein (P)2023 Penguin Audio
Anthropology Political Science Politics & Government Thought-Provoking
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Critic reviews

This book is the product of Klein’s fascination with her doppelgänger. As she charts [Naomi] Wolf’s journey towards extremism, Klein shines a light on the dangers of social media and the new world of online conspiracy theories. (James Marriott)
The most comforting book I read this year – Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger tells of her slightly paranoid obsession with Naomi Wolf, her conspiracy theorist “double”. Klein catches that sense that the world has become fictional, but she manages to stay sane, interesting and trenchantly political throughout. In difficult times, this feels very empowering. (Anne Enright)
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)
Klein wields her polymathic expertise like a sword, slicing through the mirror world ... There's a lot going on in Doppelganger, yet somehow Klein ties it all together into what we seem to be lacking as individuals: a cohesive whole. Doppelganger is both timely and timeless, a work in a grand tradition.
Naomi Klein masterfully weaves her way through anti-vaxxers, wellness influencers and alt-right demagogues, attempting to make sense of the conspiratorial turn in contemporary politics ... far reaching and relentlessly incisive. (Paula Lacey)
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)

What listeners say about Doppelganger

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Truth, sense & a balm

Naomi Klein’s book is completely immersive in our current world. It is both an analysis & story. I am so glad she read this book herself as it is immensely personal both for her and for us.

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Totally engaging…

…am so glad I got this book and incredibly grateful for her beautifully expressed ideas.

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Insightful, brilliant book

I loved the way Doppelganger was written interwoven with profound insight. Thought provoking clarity

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Mesmerising, shocking and deeply insightful

Klein’s sharp analysis is only seconded by her compassion and empathy to the targets of her sharp criticism. Her ability to deconstruct our world of mirrors, doubles and shadowland will leave you thoughtful and heartbroken, but also empowered and hopeful.
Highly recommended to anyone curious.

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Essential listening and prophetic

This book gave me new eyes to the world. As deep as it is broad. Superb narration by her too.

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life-changing

insightful, prophetic and somehow hopeful - some achievement given the backdrop of current world events (autumn 2023). A very important work

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Inspiring

This book is utterly brilliant and one of the best and most ambitious things I have read for so long. I loved how it ties together so much that is urgent and important in culture and politics today and explores it all from such a deep, rich, psychological and literary perspective. I learned such a lot from it and I have recommended it to lots of people.

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I've been recommending this to everyone

It's impossible to describe how apt this book is. It's themes are simply too important for today's chaotic word, it should be mandatory reading.

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Enlightening - profound

What begins as quirky voyage of the author to attempt to understand why her doppelgänger kept being mistaken for her, despite their radically different beliefs, bleeds into an extraordinary and penetrating analysis of The Mirror World and its allure - from conspiracy theorists to anti-vaxxers, authoritarian governments, the wellness industry, and finally antisemitism and the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock. The book is also an astonishingly rich tour of the history of doppelgängers in our culture over centuries, looking at how these complex phenomena nearly always presage the arrival of trouble. To me, this book felt like the most clear-sighted analysis of the strange world around us, and is an attempt to see through the mist, and a path to understand ourselves as well as those on the other side of the mirror.

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Well-researched, insightful, self-reflective.

Increasingly prescient the further you read.

An important new perspective on the human condition and the traumatogenic nature of the settler colonial 'civilisation' of the 19th and 20th Centuries, the impacts of which still echo through history.

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