Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1846 novella about Yakov Golyadkin is titled The Double.
The story follows Golyadkin, a nervous government clerk in Saint Petersburg whose social anxiety intensifies when he encounters a second man who looks exactly like him. The newcomer gradually takes over Golyadkin’s professional and social life, producing a disturbing exploration of identity, humiliation, and psychological breakdown.
The Double was published in February 1846, soon after Dostoevsky’s successful debut with Poor Folk. Unlike that earlier work, it received a largely negative response from contemporary critics, although later readers recognized its importance to Dostoevsky’s treatment of divided personalities and unreliable perception.
The Russian title is Dvoynik, literally meaning “the double.” It is sometimes confused with Dostoevsky’s later novel The Possessed, but the two works have different plots, forms, and characters.