Doppelganger (2023)
Doppelganger is a 2023 biography & autobiography book written by Naomi Klein.
Naomi Klein keeps being mistaken for Naomi Wolf, a writer whose politics have drifted somewhere Klein cannot follow. She turns that uncanny mix-up into an inquiry: what does having a public double reveal about identity, and about the wider culture pulling apart around her. Part memoir, part political analysis, the book maps the 2020s landscape of conspiracy thinking, wellness influencers and online paranoia as a kind of mirror world, a distorted reflection of the left she knows. Klein writes toward hope without pretending the crises, economic, medical and political, are simple to solve.
Quick answers
What is Doppelganger about?
Naomi Klein keeps being mistaken for Naomi Wolf, a writer whose politics have drifted somewhere Klein cannot follow. She turns that uncanny mix-up into an inquiry: what does having a public double reveal about identity, and about the wider culture pulling apart around her. Part memoir, part political analysis, the book maps the 2020s landscape of conspiracy thinking, wellness influencers and online paranoia as a kind of mirror world, a distorted reflection of the left she knows. Klein writes toward hope without pretending the crises, economic, medical and political, are simple to solve.
When was Doppelganger published?
Doppelganger was published in 2023.
Who made Doppelganger?
Doppelganger was written by Naomi Klein.
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Doppelganger in our writing
- Companion guide: Shapeshifters
A few thoughts on Doppelganger
Readers drawn to this should try Jon Ronson's books on internet shaming and conspiracy subcultures, which chart the same slide into the mirror world, and Jia Tolentino's Trick Mirror for an essayist turning a sharp personal lens on self and politics online. Naomi Klein's own earlier work, The Shock Doctrine and No Logo, sets up the economic argument running underneath this more intimate book.
Doubles, alternate selves and mirror-world identities
Klein's book grows out of being mistaken for her political opposite, an uncanny double she cannot shake. These stories chase the same idea: alternate selves, mirror-world versions of familiar figures, and identity thrillers where the person you think you are turns out to have a stranger wearing your face.
Money, debt and the machinery of capitalism
Doppelganger tracks how wellness grift and conspiracy sell fear for profit, a mirror of the capitalism Klein has long critiqued. These follow the money instead: debt and its weight, con artists working a mark, and the advertising and mob machinery that turn image into cash.
Biographies and true stories of people defined by their public image
Part memoir, part analysis, Doppelganger turns one writer's public double into a study of fame and image. These portraits do similar work, tracing real figures whose myths outgrew them, from a pop icon to a physicist to a family that built its own legend.