Naomi Klein explores how the internet has upended the way we think.Canadian writer Naomi Klein has spent much of her career investigating capitalism and its effects on society and culture, with a focus on the inequities it creates. Klein felt her work was distinct; readers knew what she stood for. Imagine her surprise when she started noticing online that she was being mixed up with Naomi Wolf, a writer who shot to fame with her feminist treatise The Beauty Myth in 1990. Since then Wolf has had a stellar career, but in recent years has lurched to the far right as a conspiracy theorist.
Doppelganger is Naomi Klein's attempt to come to grips with this new age of online extremism. The book explores through literature, history and politics how individuals and even societies have a dark side, an almost evil twin. (Australia often gets a mention, the doctrine of terra nullius seen as a way of denying the existence of First Nations.) If we are honest, according to Klein, we are all vulnerable to this doubling and need only look in the mirror. Doppelganger starts from a flimsy premise, but spins into a fascinating and absorbing book, full of superb analysis and surprising paradoxes.
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, by Naomi Klein. Published by Allen Lane. $36.99
DEC23
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