Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World is a brilliant and terrifying read for anyone wanting to understand the seismic shift in what were once considered collective and accepted truths in the face of a pervasive denial of science, facts, and reason. Naomi Klein (On Fire; This Changes Everything) traces how, during the Covid-19 pandemic, readers on the Internet increasingly confused her with another famous writer with a similar name, Naomi Wolf--whom Klein describes as having a distressingly loud and ill-informed conspiratorial point of view. Using her doppelganger, the "shadow versions of our collective selves," as an entry point, Klein investigates the ways in which Far Right denialism meshed with the "health and wellness" culture to create a dangerous media landscape that put people's lives in danger, and continues to do so long past the first confusing months of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Throughout this powerful read, Klein weaves in cultural examples of doppelgangers--sources as disparate as Sigmund Freud, Philip Roth, and the film Everything Everywhere All at Once--to illustrate the tension between the desire for "separation and distinctness... unity and community." In so doing, she also makes clear the possibilities in connection and the capacity of people to unite, which will be required in the fight against the "ultimate doppelganger threat--the flip into fascism that is already well underway in parts of the world." This is an urgent exploration of a subject that impacts all readers. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.