Marcel Theroux talks doppelgangers and Dr Johnson I am here to meet Marcel Theroux, whose fifth novel, Strange Bodies, concerns the possibility of an actual transference of consciousness from one body to another. Its hero, Dr Nicholas Slopen, is an academic whose life falls apart. When a mysterious message arrives promising some hitherto unseen manuscripts written by Johnson he is intrigued: they are obviously forgeries, yet have the whiff of the depressive, dropsy-ridden doctor's enormous personality. Slopen is hurled into an extraordinary existence involving a man who may or may not be Johnson, reanimated. This led him to think about authenticity - "not just the authenticity of a manuscript, but when am I really me? And when am I leading a life that's really mine? Troubling questions, which derive their power from a long line of literature and folklore. Strange Bodies, as well as containing elements of science fiction, also plays with the disturbing, and ancient, notions of the doppelganger and the golem. (He is untroubled, however, by notions of genre, pointing at Haruki Murakami: "He's kind of freed things up for us. You know, Bulgakov - is he sci-fi? Is he magic realist? Even our own tradition, George Eliot, The Lifted Veil, that's sci-fi, isn't it?") Why do we find the notion of a double so sinister? It's something that haunts literature - James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner, for instance. Well, it's because you think it's a sign of immortality, but then it's a harbinger of death. We're so convinced of our own uniqueness. Twins must have that anxiety. It's almost a sine qua non of modern life that we're all special - but if you can be duplicated then that's not true. It's something that lies deeper in his own psychology, too. My dad's a writer. It was always in the back of my mind. I was trying to work out my relations to him. When I was very small I assumed I was going to be a writer - but in my teens I reacted against it. It was only later that he listened to the "little voice in my head saying 'you'll never be happy unless you try this."" So is he always writing in the shadow of his father? I have to be careful not to be overinfluenced by him. There's something in the rhythm of the sentences... I feel like when I read Dad, that it's something I would try to do. Writing and reading have a mystical sense for Theroux, so I ask him if he feels the same way about consciousness. "There's no consensus..." he sighs. They want to put it in the brain but it's clearly in the body as well. I think I'm agnostic - in my heart of hearts I err towards a Walt Whitman-type cosmic consciousness kind of view of reality. But I have to rein that in... you also have to live in 2013 and be sensible! Does he think that transferring consciousness may be possible? He mentions a man in America, Ray Kurzweil, a "transhumanist" who wants to "live just long enough so they can upload his brain to a computer." Would Theroux like to do that? "No!" he says. A woman quietly enters the parlour, apologises, and peers at the paintings. A grin breaks out on Theroux's face. But then, I don't really want to die, either. Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux Faber & Faber, t: £12.99 (PLUS £1.35 p&p) 0844 871 1515