Two elderly people, Artur and Isabella, meet and have a passionate
sexual encounter on New Year's Eve. Details of the lives of Artur, a
retired Yugoslav army captain, and Isabella, a Holocaust survivor, are
revealed through police dossiers. As they fight loneliness and aging,
they take comfort in small things: for Artur, a collection of 274 hats;
for Isabella, a family of garden gnomes who live in her apartment.
Later, we meet the ill-fated Pupi, who dreamed of becoming a sculptor
but instead became a chemist and then a spy. As Eileen Battersby wrote,
"As he stands, in the zoo, gazing at a pair of rhinos, in a city most
likely present-day Belgrade, this battered Everyman feels very alone: 'I
would like to tell someone, anyone, I'd like to tell someone: I buried
Mother today.'" Pupi sets out to correct his family's crimes by
returning silverware to its original Jewish owners through the help of
an unlikely friend, a pawnbroker.
Described by Dasa Drndic as "my ugly little book," Doppelgänger was
her personal favorite.