Nominee for Readers’ Favourite Nonfiction (2023) in the Goodreads Choice Awards, Doppelganger by Naomi Klein is the next book selected by the Book Club.

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.

Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair.

• 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.

In collaboration with Be Free Young Carers, we’ll be discussing Doppelganger on Tuesday 8th April at 12:15 in Quad Two.

How It Works

Sign Up: Register to join the book club by Thursday 27th March (you may register after this date but we can’t guarantee a book).

Collect Your Book: We’ll provide the book. Simply pick it up from Quad Two from Monday 17th March.

Read & Discuss: You’ll have just shy of two weeks to read the book before we meet for our discussion over lunch in Quad Two on Tuesday 1st April. We’ll provide pizza, or feel free to bring your own lunch. Each session will last for 45 minutes.

About Be Free Young Carers:

Based on campus, Be Free Young Carers is the only charity in Oxfordshire dedicated to supporting children aged 8–17 with caregiving responsibilities for a family member. They’re passionate about learning and growing through books, and can’t wait to connect with other readers on campus.

The book club will be led by Hannah, one of their fundraisers. If you love discussing business and self-development books, we want to see you there.