Parallax
Parallax is the apparent shift in the position of an object when it is viewed from different points; by extension, it describes the way events change their meaning according to the observer’s position. Alan J. Pakula’s 1974 film The Parallax View turns the idea into a political metaphor: apparent facts yield to alternative explanations, identities become unstable, and the attempt to discover a single truth reveals only further perspectives. That idea carries into Double Exposure, the third novel in the Thieves of Time sequence. Its movement between Berlin, London and Cambridge repeatedly presents the same people, documents and events from different positions: intelligence files, photographs, microfilm, memories and personal loyalties all disclose something while concealing something else. Truth lies not in finding a privileged point of view, but in noticing the discrepancies between competing ones.