Doppelganger

A Trip into the Mirror World

By: Naomi Klein

Narrated by: Naomi Klein

Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

Long-listed, New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year, 2023

Long-listed, New York Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2023

Long-listed, Audible.com Best of the Year, 2023

Long-listed, The Guardian (UK) Best Books of the Year, 2023

Long-listed, Slate Best Books of the Year, 2023

Long-listed, Esquire Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2023

Long-listed, Amazon.com Best Books of the Year, 2023

Long-listed, Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year 2023

Long-listed, Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, 2024

Long-listed, Time Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2023

National Book Critics Circle Award—Nominee, 2023

This program is read by the author.

"An elegant hybrid of memoir and social science that traces the motif of the double throughout history, literature and Klein's personal life."—The New York Times

“If ever a book was necessary, it’s this one.”—Bill McKibben

“Thoughtful and honest . . . Incisive . . . Klein moves her reader toward the truer grounds of solidarity in these times.”—Judith Butler

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 Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2023 Naomi Klein (P)2023 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“It seems ever more possible that our society might collapse under the sheer weight of nonsense and performance and crazy misinformation that overwhelm our infoworld. With her trademark clarity and perception, and with chemo-level doses of wit and common sense, Naomi Klein goes further than anyone has so far in helping us understand that buzzing and confounding mess, and to see some ways out. If ever a book was necessary, it’s this one.”—Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon and Falter

“Naomi Klein’s thoughtful and honest inquiry into the troubling duplication of her name and the distorted appropriation of her views becomes the occasion for an incisive account of how the Right has appropriated Left discourses, producing a nightmarish doubling that has plunged some of us into silence. Klein moves her reader toward the truer grounds of solidarity in these times, showing us how to resist the lures of Fascism with militant humility and connection, letting ourselves be upended by what we thought we could not bear to see so that we can face and build an affirmative future.”—Judith Butler, author of Gender Trouble and The Force of Nonviolence

“Naomi Klein is one of our most important intellectuals, distilling the political economies of corruption and crisis in our time. Here she plunges into the topsy-turvy world of doubles and mirrors to show that the growth of the right is not a case of malignancies infecting our otherwise pure societies; rather, it’s a matter of our own fears, insecurities, and defense mechanisms, all of them rooted in a savagely unequal and violent society. Klein writes with humor, enormous bravery, and humbling vulnerability. This is an extraordinary book.”—Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation

The signal in the noise

Quite possibly the most important book of the year! Naomi Klein’s masterwork. Give a copy to everyone you know. Required reading.

An explanation forexplanation for Some of the crazy that drives our moment in time.

A thoughtful call to action talking about the route cause of our disenfranchisement. Kline does a good job of laying out the source of so much suffering and giving people a chance to imagine a kinder world.

Loved this book but especially as read by Naomi Klein

As thought provoking as any book I have ever read. She is a thinker and writer for the ages.

Absolutely Brilliant

Naomi makes so much sense, it's almost frightening. This should be required reading, or listening. Her presentation is wonderful.

A Very Important Read

Naomi Klein does an amazing job of connecting many seemingly unrelated issues of today into a cohesive thread; our growing disconnection through performative social media, climate change, growing fascism in America and around the world, increased political division and diagonalism, antivaxxers and conspiracy theorists, unfettered capitalism, the technocrats that control the flow of information and mold our lifestyles, health and body obsession, and the co-opting of language among other things. It's all pretty horrifying, but there is comfort in the clarity and cohesion of it all that Klein astutely provides. I'm not sure there is a more important or relevant book than this one in 2023. Can't recommend enough, please read it.

Brilliant

The perfect blend of intelligent writing and accessible language. I absolutely loved it and feel like I have a better understanding of our current cultural climate after reading. Highly recommend!

Insightful…

I’ve come to expect an insightful listen / read from Naomi and she did not let me down. As always she paints perspective and opens windows to clarity. At the 50% point of listening to the book, I bought the kindle for reading and rereading sections that were thought provoking. I recommend this and all of Naomi KLEIN’s books. They will help you see and you may never have seen before.

Powerful parallels between self and society

This is a compelling read, with comprehensive research, tremendous patience and no small amount of courage behind the story. Klein thoughtfully walks the line that divides an existential parsing of societal/human vulnerabilities and individual self-examination. This must have been difficult to write. Thankful and inspired that she did.

topic

I liked the topic and the thoughts it provoked. very ingaging. I couldn't put it down. red it in 4 days.

Astonishingly good book for our fractured times

Ms. Klein is a thoughtful and articulate writer who digs deep into the divides that plague us. Ms. Klein's narration of her book is superb, thanks in part to the pleasant sound of her voice. This book provides a detailed analysis of how the Covid-19 pandemic supercharged the radicalization of vast swaths of the U.S. population and gave rise to scary new alliances. Along the way, Ms. Klein provides an excellent concise history of antisemitism, and she also explains Israeli-Palestinian relations from the 1930s to pre-October 7 2023. Her analysis is reasoned, compassionate and likely helpful to anyone not clear on how we reached the situation on October 7. I found it more balanced than most discussions of the subject.