Body Double

This is a new book. Condition: Brand New.

A surreal thriller that blurs the lines between lies and truth, between the selves we conceal and the faces we show the world.

As winter descends and the city fills with the scent of woodsmoke, a young transcriber follows the same routine each day. She collects tapes from a ghostwriter's office, stops for an espresso and croissant, and returns home to type out the voices of strangers - stories that will become someone else's novels. Her solitary life is predictable, unremarkable ... until the day she hears something different on the tapes: a message meant only for her.

Across the city, two women, Laura and Naomi, accidentally swap coats at a department store cafe. This brief encounter sparks something electric and strange, and soon, Laura has moved in with Naomi. As the days pass, she begins to mirror her more and more closely - her gestures, her habits, her very essence. Slowly, deliberately, Laura starts to take over Naomi's life.

Meanwhile, the transcriber makes a disturbing discovery: she is beginning to disappear ...

'Entrancing and eerie, Body Double pulses with atmosphere. Fans of filmmakers like Krzysztof Kieslowski (the 'Three Colours' trilogy) may recognise something like his films here. The gorgeously noirish narrative even makes reference to a lipstick, Veronique - a possible reference to Kieslowski's 1991 film The Double Life of Veronique ... Johansson's metaphysical thriller makes you question the limits of personhood and individuality. As she ratchets up the creepiness, you can't look away.'
-Declan Fry, ABC News

'Johansson produces a captivating, oneiric meditation on the threshold where being seen shifts into being consumed ... Part of what makes Body Double so compelling is the simultaneous contemporaneity and timelessness of its central premise ... Alongside this metaphysical heft, however, another part of Body Double's undeniable charm is its minimalist, seductive, and cinematic style - a throughline of Johansson's work thus far. Bending reality with its unsettling use of repetition and duplication, Body Double is dazzling, rich with the play of mirrors at its core. In Josefsson's brilliant translation, Johansson blends Hitchcockian suspense and Lynchian surrealism to illuminate the crystalline interface between identity erasure, obsession, deception, and paranoia.'
-Sofija Popovska, Asymptote Journal

' An eerie novel of obsession and transference ... Together, the story lines fuse into an exploration of feminine selfhood, as the characters grapple with what it is to know oneself and to be known by others.'
-The New Yorker

Book details and technical specifications

Format: Paperback / softback
ISBN13: 9781761381942
Published: March 2026

Number of pages: 224
Width: 135 mm
Height: 209 mm
Depth: 16 mm

Publisher: Scribe Publications