Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Ten of the best doppelgängers

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best doppelgängers in fiction.

One novel on the list:
Despair by Vladimir Nabokov

Hermann Karlovich, a Russian businessman, tells how, in Prague, he meets a tramp called Felix who looks exactly like him. Hermann suggests a switch of identities - and then murders the gullible Felix for his own life insurance. The perfect crime. Except that the exact resemblance of the two men may be in Hermann's mind only.
Read about the other doppelgängers on Mullan's list.

--Marshal Zeringue