Home
/
Fiction
/
The Double (Film Tie-in)
The Double (Film Tie-in)
Dec 5, 2025 2:31 PM

Author:Fyodor Dostoyevsky,Ronald Wilks

The Double (Film Tie-in)

An official tie-in edition to accompany Richard Ayoade's brilliant new film based on Dostoyevsky's deliciously dark and slyly funny novel. The Doublestars Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) and Mia Wasikowska (Jane Eyre) with support from Chris O'Dowd, Sally Hawkins, Paddy Considine, Tim Key and Chris Morris.

A lonely government clerk - shy, awkward, blundering - finds himself pursued by a mysterious stranger. Somehow he looks familiar. In fact, he realizes, he looks exactly like him. He even has the same name. But, unlike him, he is charming and confident.

Soon the stranger starts insinuating himself into his life. He works at his office, stays at his apartment, ingratiates himself with his colleagues. No one seems surprised.

Who is he? What does he want? Is he a double, or something darker altogether?

Moscow-born Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) served time in a convict prison in Siberia for his political alliances, and in his later years his passion for gambling led him deeply into debt. His many brilliant novels include Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov.

Ronald Wilks has translated numerous Russian volumes for Penguin Classics, including works by Chekhov, Sologub, Tolstoy and Gogol.

If you enjoy this novel, you may want to read more by Dostoyevsky - his major novels and stories are all available in Penguin Classics, including Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Gambler and Other Stories, The Idiot, Demons, Netochka Nezvanova, The Brothers Karamazov, Poor Folk and Other Stories, The House of the Dead and The Village of Stepanchikovo.

Reviews

A thrilling, all-new adventure... Spectacular

—— Goodreads.com

An outstanding, compelling drama from Downham

—— The Bookseller

It's one of the most powerful books we've read in an age. Even after finishing, it lingered with us for days . . . Jenny Downham's novel blows other books out of the water

—— Sugar

I loved it . . . Beautifully written with a painful but penetrating awareness

—— Bookbag

A tale of love across the social divide in coastal Norfolk, with the edge of a crime novel . . . Split loyalties and the chasm between the young couple's life experiences make their enduring relationship a triumph. Their credible and tender sexual encounter is the calm before the storm, as for Romeo and Juliet

—— Observer

Knausgaard's Proustian attention to detail and scrupulous analysis of emotional nuance is almost maddening – but ultimately magnificent

—— Vogue

Knausgaard continues masterfully

—— Malcolm Forbes , Literary Review

One of the most anticipated books of the year (the decade)

—— Emily Stokes , Financial Times

His devotees gobble each new volume with an eagerness previously reserved only for box sets of Borgen

—— Tim Martin , Daily Telegraph

Knausgaard transforms the personal and mundane into the universal and perennially significant... There is such depth of feeling beneath the vibrant exterior, such sense of the goodness present in human existence

—— Paul Binding , Spectator

Accessibly and punchily written, an intimate, determined and ultimately successful attempt to shape the tiny mundanities of life into something quite unexpectedly beautiful, compelling and substantial

—— Paul Connolly , Metro

Knausgaard is a writer strong enough to survive the hype... A masterpiece for the age of the selfie... Brutally frank about the frustrations of marriage, work and parenthood, it's often horrifying and deeply funny

—— Anthony Cummins , Observer

Compelling

—— Andrew Neather , Evening Standard

Astounding... A work of such sincerity that, to paraphrase Baudelaire, the paper shrivels and flares at the touch of his fiery pen

—— Daniel Fraser , Quietus

Free-form, fear-filled, densely descriptive…Norway’s biggest literary star since Ibsen… [Knausgaard] has no obvious superiors among the writers now available to an English-reading public

—— Leo Robson , New Statesman
Comments
Welcome to zzdbook comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.zzdbook.com All Rights Reserved