The Helmet of Horror
by Victor Pelevin
Canogate, HK$104
Russian Victor Pelevin joins authors Chinua Achebe, A.S. Byatt, Donna Tart and Su Tong, among others, who have contributed to Canongate's series of myths repackaged for modernity. His universal story centres on the minotaur and the labyrinth in the age of the internet. Which is to say that cyberspace becomes the contemporary home of Theseus, who kills the monster and escapes the maze with the help of Ariadne and her ball of thread. Retelling the myth is a group of chat-room participants who find themselves locked in rooms with only computers for company, which is why conversation revolves around their predicament and whether the mind is responsible for the feeling of being trapped. Readers are fed philosophical ponderings through free-association exchanges among the characters, who go by names such as IsoldA, Romeo-y-Cohiba and UGLI 666. Innovative though Pelevin may be, the book turns into a maze of sorts. Take this pronouncement by one of the hostages: 'The labyrinth represents the world in which we live, wide at the entrance, but narrow at the exit. He who is ensnared by the joys of this world and is burdened with its sins may only rediscover the doctrine of life through effort.' Readers, too, will have to exert themselves to finish the book.
