The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur (The Myths Series) [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Victor Pelevin (Author), Various (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2006 | Series: The Myths Series (Book 4)

Victor Pelevin, the iconoclastic and wildly interesting contemporary Russian novelist who The New Yorker named one of the Best European Writers Under 35, upends any conventional notions of what mythology must be with his unique take on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. They have never met, they have been assigned strange pseudonyms, they inhabit identical rooms that open out onto very different landscapes, and they have entered a dialogue they cannot escape - a discourse defined and destroyed by the Helmet of Horror. Its wearer is the dominant force they call Asterisk, a force for good and ill in which the Minotaur is forever present and Theseus is the great unknown. The Helmet of Horror is structured according to the way we communicate in the twenty-first century - using the Internet - yet instilled with the figures and narratives of classical mythology. It is a labyrinthine examination of epistemological uncertainty that radically reinvents the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur for an age where information is abundant but knowledge ultimately unattainable.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In the Greek myth, Ariadne, the daughter of Minos of Crete, falls in love with Theseus and helps him kill the fearsome Minotaur, a half-bull, half-human monster trapped in the center of a vast labyrinth. Armed with the sword that she supplies and holding the end of a thread that marks his path, Theseus kills the beast and makes his way back out. As his addition to the Myths series, celebrated Russian novelist Pelevin creates a brilliant new telling of the myth: a group of strangers find themselves in a modern-day labyrinth, trapped in identical rooms, given archetypal screen names and able to interact only through a chatroom thread begun by one "Ariadne." The figures who inhabit this doomed maze are drawn from many sources, for instance, "Romeo-y-Cohiba" and "IsoldA" both look for love, but are stymied when they try to find it with each other. All are haunted by the "Helmet of Horror," which is both the machine that controls their destiny and the mind that creates the machine, and there is no Theseus to save them. Pelevin has updated this myth in an absurd and terrifying metaphysical consideration of the labyrinths in which we all find ourselves and the traps we willingly enter as we move through our lives. (Apr. 18)
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Review

“As often with Pelevin, this book is a mixture of the witty, the brilliant and the barking mad.”
—The Daily Telegraph (UK)

“[I]magine Douglas Coupland successfully channeling Samuel Beckett and Philip K. Dick while trading set-pieces with Kurt Vonnegut and Nikolai Gogol. . . . [Victor] Pelevin is the foremost fiction writer to have emerged in Russia since the collapse of communism and the rise of post-Soviet consumer capitalism.”
—The Globe and Mail

“A brilliant, post-modern, eclectic vision of myth, mind and meaning. And of the human dilemma and its horns, ancient and modern.”
—The Times (London)

“At times The Helmet of Horror is as much of a maze as the ones Pelevin’s characters are trapped in, a hall of mirrors that, once entered, is hard to escape from.”
—Sunday Herald (UK)


From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio on CD Unabridged; Unabridged edition (April 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 142331154X
• ISBN-13: 978-1423311546
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,967,989 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting, April 24, 2006

By 

Margaret Dybala "too many books, too little time" (Pearland, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur (Hardcover)

I found this book very intriguing. I can't say I "enjoyed" it -- Pelevin is one of those genius authors, like S. Lem, that I feel I should like, but actually find very difficult. It is like there is a joke and I don't understand the punchline. And maybe I get all the facts of the joke wrong, too. At any rate, this is a retelling of the Theseus/Minataur myth, and is a part of the incredibly wonderful series retelling the old myths by contemporary top authors. I have loved each book in the series, so far (I especially liked Weight, the retelling of Atlas). Pelevin's book sets the labyrinthe as a computer chat room, with the "thread" followed by various people who find themselves each trapped alone in an identical room. Well, we are all in traps, and we all have illusions, etc. So I recommend this interesting book as a part of the series. I'm going to have to work on my understanding of Pelevin, however.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ALL STAR CAST OF NARRATORS FOR THIS SPIN ON AN ANCIENT MYTH, July 10, 2006

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur (The Myths Series) (Audio CD)

Audiobook aficionados will think they've stumbled upon nirvana when listening to this update on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur as read by eight of the best and brightest narrators to be found. Not only are they all first rate voice performers with wide ranges of experience but they're also award winners - far too many to mention here.

Russian novelist Victor Pelevin who was named among the Best European Writers under 35 is anything but conventional. Here, he takes an ancient myth and puts a today spin on it by creating eight characters, all assigned pseudonyms, who sign on to a chat room to discuss philosophy. We may remember that the Minotaur lived in a labyrinth and these characters find themselves in a virtual one.

The story opens with Ariadne writing, "I shall construct a labyrinth in which I can lose myself together with anyone who tries to find me - who said this and about what?" This thread is responded to by the other characters who are all in separate spaces, places of which they are not sure - where are they?

This is a sci-fi story which some may find puzzling and others enthralling as two of the characters struggle to find each other and others labor to explore their shared predicament.

- Gail Cooke

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating discussion., October 5, 2009

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Frank Todd (Oroville, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur (Myths, The) (Paperback)

To begin with, this is not a retelling of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. (In my opinion, The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood is a retelling.) It is, rather, a discussion of the Philosophy of Mind between a chorus of stereotypical characters using the details of the myth as a backdrop. It reminds me of a Platonic dialog, examining from different perspectives the methods with which we ascribe meaning to our apprehension of the world around us, and more interestingly, the shortcomings that accompany those methods. Having read it twice, I continue to find it provocative. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys philosophy and labyrinths.