Title: Dancing with Shadows
Author: Shiraz Pradhan
Publisher: Partridge Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1-4828-3595-1
Pages: 327
Genre: Modern Fiction, Romance
Reviewed by: Jason Lolus
Hollywood Book Reviews
Scientific determinism, Tarot cards, Cinema, Music, Love, and Quantum Physics. The narrator negotiates love, murder, and war in this captivating philosophical journey. Pradhan is exceptional in showing the narrator’s holistic approach to understanding.
Quantum physics and love. A united theory of everything? It is an idealistic adolescent goal, and this is what makes Dancing with Shadows so interesting. This is a coming of age story of a young man in East Africa whose intuition tells him that these things are all connected. In his growing self-awareness and world weariness, he is obsessed with connecting the dots of his life in order to reveal some profound significance (i. e. the “music of God”). Who hasn’t pondered such questions? How is my life unique or significant? How much more would life mean to me if I understood, say, the music of God . . . and what is the music of God?
Although he is a young man continually preoccupied with sex and love, he is essentially a philosopher. He wants to understand things such as the life application of a quantum wave collapse or the difference between sex and love. This story is a Hamlet-esque self-portrait in his constant questioning. It echoes the uncertain and awkward, yet outwardly confident manner of Holden Caulfield. But above all, this story made me think of the kind quest for mystical self-importance that I recall from Joyce’s narrator in “Araby.”
Read the novel for the adventure or the hero’s quest. Read to discover what the “shadows” might be. This story is set against the backdrop of an East/West dichotomy (and the significant references to cinema – Bollywood/Hollywood). His identity is formed by the influence of cinema. This is as much a Western phenomenon as it is Eastern. Are the shadows the idols on the screen or the potentialities in his own life? In the end, his desire to understand significance comes down to understanding choice. Think of Robert Frost’s decision in the yellow wood, or, in this case, Schrӧdinger’s cat.