Try free for 30 days

  • Doppelganger

  • A Trip into the Mirror World
  • By: Naomi Klein
  • Narrated by: Naomi Klein
  • Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (76 ratings)

1 credit a month to use on any title, yours to keep (you’ll use your first credit on this title).
Stream or download thousands of included titles.
Access to exclusive deals and discounts.
$16.45 a month after 30 day trial. Cancel anytime.
Doppelganger cover art

Doppelganger

By: Naomi Klein
Narrated by: Naomi Klein
Try for $0.00

$16.45 per month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $26.99

Buy Now for $26.99

Pay using voucher balance (if applicable) then card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions Of Use and Privacy Notice and authorise Audible to charge your designated credit card or another available credit card on file.

Publisher's Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired a double? Someone almost like you, and yet not you at all?

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.

©2023 Naomi Klein (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic Reviews

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

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    67
  • 4 Stars
    5
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    62
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    58
  • 4 Stars
    5
  • 3 Stars
    4
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Incredible analysis of where we are now

Klein's latest book blends memoir, politics, history, and literature into a startlingly clever and poignant analysis of our current climate. I was at times challenged, comforted, angered and at one point almost in tears. A must read.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Deliriously exciting book

Klein has ventured deep into herself and our contemporary political/cultural malaise in way way that offers hope and solutions without artifice or saccharine platitude. READ IT NOW!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Fantasic

Naomi Klein is so insightful, thoughtful, intelligent, empathetic. This book is exactly what the world needs right now. And I enjoyed having the book narrated by Klein herself.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Both brilliant and infuriating

There’s so much to love about this book: it’s often thrillingly incisive, and always entertaining and engaging. I was obsessed with it while listening, and there are sections of the book that take your breath away with the suppleness of Klein’s language and the illumination of her insights.

But her blind spots are infuriating. She makes a broad plea for compassion and empathy, while not extending that to her doppelgänger or people in ‘the mirror world’. (A low point was her one-sided account of the Canadian trucker strike, akin to the laziest mainstream media coverage that painted the truckers as selfish Nazis, without any real appreciation of the community and solidarity they found in the protest, Indigenous Canadians who were a part of it, or interrogation of the truly authoritarian response of the Canadian Govt in freezing their bank accounts.)

She makes a beautiful case to love every child on earth however they present in the world, but follows it with scathing contempt for other parents of autistic children who harbour questions about what caused autism.

She critiques our cultural tendency to split the world into binaries, but her own worldview is a rigid binary (left wing = kind goodies, right wing = selfish baddies: full disclosure, I’m very left wing).

She’s appalled by ‘the mirror world’s’ falsehoods and fantasies, but repeats falsehoods and fantasies of her own (“Russian bots” threatening our world has as much basis in reality as “vaccine shedding.”)

She refreshingly critiques the smugness and superiority of liberals, but her own smugness and superiority persist throughout - particularly obvious with her tone while narrating the audiobook.

She tells us stories where doppelgänger tales are ultimately about integrating one’s shadow self, but does not face her own shadow (except in the most superficial way).

For all her pleas for humanity, she ultimately defines people by their ideology, not their human-ness.

This book had the potential to be a timeless masterpiece, but is held back by Klein’s blindness to her own shadow.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Really very good

Only critique is that it could have done with a good edit in places. That said, totally worth it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A guide to dystopia, and a roadmap to a better place

Klein is an astute observer of patterns, and effectively predicts the current Gaza crisis, and the growing power of fascism globally. She carefully deconstructs the web of conspiracies that has engulfed our politics, and reveals their more mundane roots, in the issues that political progressives have neglected.

She has a powerful message about how isolation under covid and atomisation under capitalism has broken our ability to act collectively and care for one another. Her call for a return to collective action and community is refreshing and urgently needed.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Thought provoking and affirming

Arguably Klein’s best book to date (and there is still competition), so good I bought the hard copy too

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great listen!

Wonderfully tangential in the themes explored, and skilfully crafted to create a compelling narrative. A really great listen!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Making sense of where we find ourselves

A fantastic analysis of the mad present. I come away with vocabulary to describe what is happening, and the valuable reminder that calm is a form of resistance. This book is a gift to humanity.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

I want to read it again immediately! Incredible!

One of the most amazing books I’ve ever read. A wild journey from deep introspection into the self to powerful visions for broader humanity, and so many brilliant ideas in between.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.