From luxury ‘dupes’ to literary doubles: why doppelgangers are everywhere right now

Isabel Waidner’s fifth novel, As If, opens with two bedraggled strangers: Aubrey invites Lindsey into her flat and notices, with pained curiosity, how alike they look. That unsettling premise echoes my own Lean Cat, Savage Cat — both novels draw protagonists from the lower rungs of showbiz, use the language of fashion in deliberately off-putting ways, set artistic myth against housing insecurity and wage instability, and hinge on a mysterious pair of doubles.

They were published the same day, which raises the question: does one book have its own doppelganger? The double haunts film, fashion and fiction. It has appeared on screen since The Student of Prague (1913) and in titles such as Rebecca, Vertigo and Black Swan, with recent horror like The Substance and Get Out mining identity and celebrity.

Sinners, in which twin brothers are both played by Michael B Jordan, won three Baftas last month, and Famous, about a Hollywood heart-throb and his obsessive lookalike fan, is now in post-production.

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