Mirror of Fate & Multicultural View Create Intense Drama in New Fiction Death of a Taxi Driver. Writing within a maturing and complex social system, Mohammed Helal’s book is a cry from the heart that reverberates in a sad tale of loneliness, injustice, alienation and misery. TORONTO–(Released)–A fascinating journey into inner space, written with romanticism unique to the author’s culture, Mohammed Helal’s Death of a Taxi Driver is an intense and exciting tragedy of Everyman on the streets of Toronto. Amidst the riches of Canada’s premiere city, an immigrant taxi driver pursues a proletarian destiny–he has committed a crime and has undergone a harrowing time through the slow and onerous courts. Meantime he roams free and like the proverbial Dutchman, roams Toronto’s streets in endless circles, ruminating on his fate and his miseries - one of which is a vicious love triangle involving him, his wife, and his taxi company owner, until he decides to break the mirror of fate and end his life and with it, the misery and mental suffering that he carried around for a long time. Mohammed Helal’s viewpoint is sordid multicultural, and a positive net effect is the general sense of one being transported or connected to many other times and places while the story describes modern scenes in its here and now. Helal does a literary gamble in narrating a story set in a modern Western city with the clear, descriptive rococo of classical Persian storytelling and the flavors of his native Bangladesh. He skillfully and discretely updates these to a Western standard and makes an interesting case for non-Western authors to be accepted as equals in Western literature. Why, one asks, has the author gambled thus? The answer is, because he has the vision and talent to see it through. The many contrasts thus made, though, supports the taxi driver’s alienation–whilst his heart and soul might fly through the city on a magic carpet, he must twist and tangle with the taxi’s wheel to escape a dark fate secret in the reality of Toronto’s streets. The story Death of a Taxi Driver itself is elegiac, beating with slow philosophical wings cascaded wonderfully in the sparkling stream of dramatic events. At the same time it is realistic with a purpose – to connect its readers with concurrent social and political issues and an urge for a sustainable political journey to an aspired direction. It connotes a deathly state of the mind of the main character taxi driver Mallick who raises his voice with others against the existing justice system. Interestingly, this captivating fiction reflects on scintillating romance and suspense, burning sensuality, roaring rage, flames of silent revenge, bad mistakes, mental travails, guilt, redemption, depression and hallucination with intimate and vivid descriptions, emotional intensity and psychological insight. While the taxi driver has the heart of his native land, he has, because he also feels deeply about the common miseries of the Western society he is in, admits that he has become himself a different man, but one who is acutely aware of his roots and his being quite different in the existing multicultural society. In the end, Helal cuts through the lines to ask readers: “The burning question here is how can we minimize our emotional mistakes, and how much is a society willing to respond to a unique individual need?” For anyone, whether Western, Arab, Oriental, African or Latin American, Helal’s book is a cry from the heart that reverberates in this sad tale of loneliness and the seeming uselessness of human life that has no other purpose in its solemn journey but utility and productivity in a society which only appreciates economic value.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 02:08:44 +0000
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