Once again, in his brainy zany kind of way, Martino takes us through the interior landscape of existence as he describes a journey whereby some foreigners and some Moroccans journey through the desert of Morocco. So acutely, does the author's insights into the magical mystery tour of life pour out from each character, that the reader forgets Morocco and the desert and finds himself/herself in a wonderful landscape within the self. With references to the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, and prophets throughout history such as Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Muhammad, Martino takes a divine and universal interior landscape to display the frailties, the despair, and the hope, the sorrow, and the joy, the accomplishments and failures of mere mortals living in this divine historical landscape that is projected onto a mortal setting: a journey across a desert where all human feelings and actions are exposed. Unique and poetic/prose-like writing, with grand absurdities, hyperbole, magical/realism, and allegorical meanings take the reader on a hallucinatory trip that closely resembles the reality of it all; a parallel reality that can never capture the ultimate Reality but that can nevertheless, as Martino has done, depict the observation and experience of such Reality as it glimmers in the dark and becomes the sun in the day, all the while oscillating from one position to the other and suggesting an entirely different place. Come with Martino to this 'place' on a zany brainy journey through the desert of Morocco that so closely if not exactly paints the interior of the mind as it tries to settle into the heart.
MAURO MEVLUD MARTINO was born in Calabria, southern Italy on March 29th, 1953. He is known as a Canadian Italian Turkish writer as his work has also been translated into Turkish from his original English work. A year after birth, in 1954, with his parents, he arrived in Toronto, Canada. It was there that he was educated, and It was there that he learned to live inside different cultures that created a diverse world in his mind. A world that ultimately nourished itself from a place without borders. A world that found its form in different hues and approaches to life but where he came to believe originated from the SAME SOURCE. Now, 71 years old, and after having included Istanbul as one of his residences since his retirement from teaching English literature in Toronto in 2004, he continues to reflect on a life that experienced much more than family and profession, and he continues to wonder and write mostly about the journey towards the SAME SOURCE. Mr. Martino also involves himself in film work, and has acted in Turkish film and television, and has attended many important film festivals including Cannes and Berlin as a representative of Turkish film. He has been a member of the jury for the Alexandria Film Festival and the Muslim Film Festival of Kazan, and a special guest of the Kolkata Film Festival. His film scripts are also in the making and being considered by production companies. Oftentimes, culture, race, color, religion, and blood ties are sources of wonderful nourishment and add to the beauty of the diversity of living. However, Martino seeks to place the SAME SOURCE ahead of all so that his journey leaves no loose ends. His work is an invitation to all of those who are looking for much more than what appears on the outside.
